By Andrei Skvarsky.
Due to a current moratorium on the investment of pension system money, Russia’s Pension Fund will not get 309bn rubles ($8.1bn) it was planned to receive from the state in 2015, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has announced.
Part of this sum – at least 100bn rubles ($2.6bn) – would go into a planned fund for propping up major state-controlled companies hit by the Ukraine-related Western sanctions, Russian media cited Siluanov as saying on September 15.
The recipient firms would eventually have to return the money to the state, Siluanov warned, according to government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Oil company Rosneft, gas giant Gazprom and Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank are among the sanctioned companies.
The moratorium, initially designed as a way to release funds for development projects in Crimea after the Ukrainian peninsula’s annexation by Russia this spring, was due to expire at the end of 2014 but has been extended to 2015.
One of Siluanov’s deputies, Sergei Belyakov, was sacked last month for publicly condemning the measure.
Belyakov had said on Facebook that, as an Economic Development Ministry official, he was “ashamed” of the moratorium’s extension.
The move “is harmful for the economy … the explanation that has been offered effectively means opting against the use of this money in the economy in principle and not just in 2015”, he said. Moreover, “we had promised everyone that the moratorium would be in effect in 2014 alone”.
“I ask for everyone’s forgiveness for the stupidities we are doing and for not keeping our word,” Belyakov said.
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