Sergey Pyatenko, General Director of the FBK Economic and Law School, took part in the on-line conference on the “Budget “non-sequestering” and pension “non-maneuvering”: has the point of no return been reached?”

On 16 October an on-line conference was held on the “Budget “non-sequestering” and pension “non-maneuvering”: has the point of no return been reached?” organized by the “Finam.ru” information group.
In the conference took part Oksana Dmitrieva, State Duma deputy, first vice-chairperson of the State Duma Budget and Tax Committee, Sergey Pyatenko, general director of the FBK Economic and Law School, Sergey Ulanov, head of the Center for Life Quality Standards of the Institute for Social Policy under the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, Alexandra Suslina, the Economic Expert Group expert, Andrey Chernyavsky, the leading scientific officer of the “Center for Development” Institute of the HSE, Ekaterina Silakova, “Finam Management” asset manager.
The invited experts answered the readers’ questions and discussed the current economic situation in Russia and in the world. Responding to the questions Sergey Pyatenko expounded his attitude to the pension reform. So, in response to why the reforms were carried out so frequently and at what age one should ponder over the pension the expert said “Rules of the game are continuously changing due to despair. The authorities cannot speak honestly and the people are not ready to accept an honest conversation. The simplest scheme is: let’s have a look at the pension age and the pensions in the countries of our development level, such as Brazil, Mexico, etc. Let’s also look at those who are by 10-20 years ahead of us. The schematic conclusion will be as follows: if now a good pension is, let’s simplify it, 10 thousand roubles, then in 10 years (adjusted to the inflation rate) a good pension will be 13 thousand roubles. So, “you begin to work, you begin thinking about your pension”.
Answering to the question whether it is worthwhile to transfer the accumulation part of the pension to the Pension NGOs S. Pyatenko said: “The sooner Russians understand that being concerned about your old age is your personal concern and not of the government, the sooner the old age will cease to be the synonym of poverty. In the country of our level of development under any reforms of the pension system the government pensions will be small in the visible future. And now they are not lower than in the countries of our level like Brazil, Mexico, etc.”
The experts also answered questions about cutbacks in budgetary spending; the readers were also curious why there were no military retrenchments. Sergey Pyatenko gave an example: “He who is unwilling to feed his army will have to feed somebody else’s – nobody cancelled that ancient truth. The USA and NATO bombed Yugoslavia for their attempt to preserve their territorial integrity. Other examples: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc., are also widely-known. We were not bombed for Chechnya exclusively for the reason that we have nuclear weapons and other elements of deterrence. If there is no such containment we will be easily subject to bombing for the police strong actions, against, say, the introduction of Sharia courts and obligatory paranja.”
Another topic – migration policy. According to S. Pyatenko, although the labor migration finally makes for the GDP increase, social tension swells too.