BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec.28
By Elchin Mehdiyev – Trend:
The Azerbaijani parliament considered a bill of the law ‘On workplace pensions in Azerbaijan’ at the meeting held on Dec.28, Trend reports.
The main essence of the amendments is to strengthen the principles of social insurance when assigning pensions, combining additional payments to pensions for certain categories of persons with presidential pensions, extending the grace period regarding the length of service for another two years, improving legislation by deepening reforms in the field of electronic assignment of pensions.
The new bill proposed to abolish the law’s Article 19, since the allowances to the insurance part of the workplace pension provided for in it weakened the principles of social insurance in the pension system, and highly complicated their funding process.
It was also proposed in the bill to cancel the extra payments to pensions, reflected in the above article, and combine them with the pensions of the President of Azerbaijan. Most of the persons from the categories specified in the 19th article (members of families of martyrs, National Heroes of Azerbaijan, war invalids, veterans of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, invalids of the first group, and others) have already been assigned presidential pensions.
According to the bill, canceling pension supplements and increase of presidential pensions will improve the social provision of the above persons and speed up the electronic assignment of such social benefits. At present, it’s envisaged to establish new pensions for persons not covered by the presidential pension.
Besides, persons from the above categories will also receive a monthly social allowance or workplace pension if they are legally entitled to do so.
The amendments also reflected the issue of extending the grace period in the field of insurance seniority for another two years in order to ensure the availability of workplace pensions for persons who have reached retirement age. So, when assigning an old-age pension to persons who have reached retirement age in 2019-2022, the insurance period accumulated until January 1, 2006, will be charged with a decrease by 25 years, and from 2023 - by 1 year for each calendar year. The amendments will also create an opportunity to assign a workplace pension to a person in electronic form, regardless of the place of his/her residence.
Following discussions, the bill was put up on a vote and adopted in the second reading.