An ISET-PI team led by EEPRC’s Head Norberto Pignatti is conducting a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) of the pension reform currently discussed in Georgia. The government of Georgia is considering to introduce a reform of the Pension system. The process is led by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development (MoESD).

Starting from October 1, 2017, a private retirement savings system will be launched in Georgia as part of broader pension reform. This reform has been discussed by Nino Doghonadze and Yaroslava Babych in Decent Income in Old Age: Georgian Dream or Reality? on the ISET Economist. Today we will focus only on one very interesting aspect of the reform – the “opt-out” principle and its implementation in the Georgian realities.

In November 2015, the National Audit Office of the UK has published a report saying: “The Department for Work and Pensions has successfully introduced automatic enrolment to workplace pensions for large and medium-sized employers.” The National Audit Office found that 58,000 employers have enrolled 5.4 million workers between October 2012 and August 2015. The huge increase in enrolment was due to a small policy change introduced by the UK government in October 2012.

On May 29, Dr. Maksym Obrizan, from the Kyiv School of Economics, provided an interesting seminar on the subject of his working paper, "Retirement in HRS participants: the role of endogenous subjective and objective health measures".

On the first of January, Armenia will adopt an entirely new pension system. This radical reform addresses two problems: widespread poverty among the elderly and a lack of capital in the economy. The very same problems also exist in Georgia, where the standard governmental pension currently is 150 lari, and where the economy is suffering from high capital costs due to notoriously low saving rates.