G. Sahakian: We bear responsibility for accumulative pension law

People probably lost faith in the future, but each Armenian should make his contribution to the country’s economy, the head of Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) faction Galust Sahakian said during a briefing in the parliament today, when commenting on the introduction of the compulsory accumulative pension system on January 1, 2014.

According to him, after the postponement of the compulsory accumulative pension system’s introduction for a year, the opposition would make a proposal to postpone it for six months, and so on.

“If we had accepted the opposition’s proposal, who would have been responsible for it? Now we bear responsibility for the law we adopted,” Sahakian said. In his words, if any problems arise during the law’s application, amendments will be made.

In response to the remark that the parties making up the minority in the parliament are going to ask the Constitutional Court to suspend the law’s enforcement and discuss the issue of postponing the compulsory component, Galust Sahakian said: “If the Constitutional Court takes another decision, then the responsibility will lie with the Constitutional Court and protesters”.

The introduction of the compulsory accumulative pension system is stipulated by the Law on Accumulative Pensions passed by the parliament in 2010. By the law, the voluntary component of the accumulative system has been used since 2011, while the compulsory component will be introduced on January 1, 2014.Citizens born after 1974 will have to pay 5% of their salaries to accumulative funds. The opponents of the new pension system stage protests, saying that its compulsory character violates citizens’ rights and contradicts the Armenian Constitution.