Parliament adopts bill on amendments to pension law

The Armenian parliament adopted today a bill on amendments to the Law on Accumulative Pensions. 68 deputies voted in favor, 12 against, 36 abstained.

Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and ARF-Dashnaktsutyun factions took a decision to abstain in the vote. Heritage and Armenian National Congress (HAK) opposition factions said they would vote against the bill.

Speaker Galust Sahakyan said there is no need to flare up tensions. He put the issue to the vote.

The compulsory accumulative pension system was introduced in Armenia on January 1, 2014. Under the new Law on Accumulative Pensions, citizens born after 1974 have to pay 5% of their wages to accumulative funds, with the state paying another 5%.

Four factions of the Armenian parliament – BHK, ARFD, HAK and Heritage factions opposed the introduction of the compulsory accumulative component. They applied to the Constitutional Court of Armenia, asking it to declare the new law unconstitutional.

On January 24 the Constitutional Court suspended two clauses of the Law on Accumulative Pensions – parts 3 of Articles 76 and 86 pending the court decision. On April 2 the Constitutional Court announced its 64-page decision, under which a number of articles of the law were recognized as contradicting the Constitution and null.