Pension assignment will be automated by mid-2013

The State Social Protection Fund (SSPF) of Azerbaijan will appeal to pensioners requesting information on their length of service, SSPF chairman Salim Muslimov told reporters on Friday.

"One problem has to be solved for the transfer to the automated assignment of pensions which is the collection of data on the length of service of pensioners who retired before 2006. If we receive this data, according to the law each year will be multiplied by 170 manats, making up a person's pension capital by January 2006. We have data on social contributions of all individuals since 2006 " Muslimov said.

According to him however, the process of data collection is a bit delayed.

"We assumed that we will complete it by the end of this year. However, practice shows that this is a relatively complex process. We have collected 80 per cent of the information on pensioners from employers and people who were registered in the fund as individuals.

"However, there is a large number of persons in Azerbaijan who were not registered in the fund and have pension rights. We need to collect information about them. Therefore, we plan to appeal to such people early next year so that every citizen who is not working and has not been registered in the state fund provides information on his length of service to the local offices of the fund which will then send them to the centre," Muslimov said.

According to him the fund plans to transfer to the automated assignment of pensions by the middle of next year. The state programme for the development of pension insurance in 2009-2015 has set 2013 as the completion date of the process.

"As for the automation of disability benefits, or loss of head of the family, it is essential that the relevant state institutions (Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security) form the database, so we could have access. Work in this direction is also underway," Muslimov said.

The total number of pensioners in the country reached 1,272,000 and the number of those insured in the State Fund and having individual accounts is 2,150,000. This means 37 per cent of the population uses the services of the state fund.


/Trend/