YEREVAN. – The funded pension reforms’ “mandatory” component is suspended, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan stated at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.

Abrahamyan presented his seven provisions for the pension reforms.

“At this point, [and] with the new law, the pension reforms’ mandatory component is de facto suspended until the adoption of a new legislative package.

“At the same time, I am confident that those organizations, which have assumed the load of the employees’ [pension] payments by way of raising the salaries, will continue making the payments. These amounts don’t get lost anywhere; they are the employees’ money, and I just ask to wait several months to specify their recalculation mechanisms. As of tomorrow, we will begin to work jointly with everyone.

“And in the end, I want to say to everyone that I, too, am against anyone violating the Constitution of Armenia on any matter, that the pension reforms are realized in this form, that any matter remains open or unclear for our citizenry, [and] that any beneficiary group’s voice remains unheard in an important program such as the pension reforms.

“But, more importantly, I am in favor of finding the most effective and acceptable way for the pension reforms, and I am in favor of jointly implementing it,” PM Abrahamyan specifically stated.

On April 2, the Constitutional Court (CC) of Armenia declared unconstitutional a whole series of articles in the new Law on Funded Pensions. Despite this ruling, however, the state-run financial institutions still obliged the employers to make mandatory funded pension cuts from the salaries of their employees. The respective reasoning was that the CC gave the parliament and the government until September 30 to amend the aforesaid law’s provisions that were deemed unconstitutional.