PIO Fund Pays Pensions Without Subsidies for the First Time Since 1992

The most recent monthly pension payments are being financed from employee contribution payments, which hasn’t been the case in decades. From the beginning of the year, the collection of contributions is higher by 36%, and the authorities explain this with an increase in the employment.

In the 1970s, when the ratio of salaried employees to retirees was four to one, the money would overflow from the then social institutions and contributions were used for the construction of the Gazela Bridge and Sava Centar. In the 1980s, there was just enough for the pensions. In the early 1990s, these institutions grew into the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund (PIO), which is constantly subsidized from the state budget.

– What’s really good news for our country is that, for the first time since its founding in 1992, PIO paid the pensions for the current month on its own – says Relja Ognjenovic, the deputy director of PIO.

Of the RSD 58 billion that is required for the monthly payment of the pensions, in June, the payment for 1,400,000 pensioners who used to be employed was covered, whereas the state subsidized the payment for agricultural pensioners and formerly self-employed pensioners with 11.5%. The overall subsidy in 2012 for all pensions amounted to over 48%, in 2016 it dropped to 35%, whereas last year it was 20%.

The trend which threatened to equalize the number of employees and the number of pensioners has been reversed. The competent ministry says that it is now 1 to 1.6 in favor of the employees who pay contributions. Around RSD 3 billion in contributions is paid each month by the companies who opted for the possibility of meeting last year’s obligations this year due to the coronavirus epidemic.

Republički Fond za penzijsko i invalidsko osiguranje

Ministarstvo za rad, zapošljavanje, boračka i socijalna pitanja Republike Srbije

Poreska uprava Srbije

PIO Fund

Ministry for Labor Veteran and Social Policy

Tax Administration

Relja Ognjenović

contributions for pension and disability insurance

payment of pensions