State Duma proposes to pay the 13th month pension benefit before the New Year

A draft law, providing for the payment of the so-called 13th pension benefit to pensioners on the New Year's Eve has been submitted to the Government of the Russian Federation for consideration.  It was proposed due to rising inflation and the need to purchase more food and gifts by the end of the outgoing year.  The author of the idea was Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

The bill on the annual additional payment to pensioners on the eve of the New Year was developed by the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs.

The parliamentarians considered it necessary to introduce such measures due to inflation and a decrease in the purchasing power of pensioners.

The explanatory note attached to the bill says that this year, the inflation rate may reach 9%, which in turn cannot but affect the income of pensioners. At the same time, Rosstat cites data according to which the real incomes of this category of citizens, despite adjustments made due to the increase in the cost of goods, have been declining for many months.

According to Yaroslav Nilov, who heads the State Duma committee that developed the bill, new payments are necessary due to the quality of pension provision in Russia.

The parliamentarian noted that the pensions are small, their recalculation for non-working pensioners is unequal, and the employed do not have the right to indexation at all, Izvestia reports. Nilov also noted that such pre-New Year payments had already been made on the initiative of the president, and now the time has come to make them annual.