Six years ago, on a pre-holiday December evening, hundreds of Bulgarian citizens protested in the center of Sofia against the nationalization of the second pillar of the pension system. A group of enthusiasts organized this happening under the slogan "Hands off pensions" to protect the private, real savings of every working citizen of ours. By …
More »The latest NSSI report emphasizes the need for pension reform
This week, the latest actuarial report of the National Social Security Institute was released, which analyzes the current financial state of the pension system and forecasts future developments. The report says in plain text that there is not enough money for pensions, and the deficit in the National Social Security Institute will continue to grow in the coming decades until 2070. As a result of …
More »The biggest danger facing second pensions
On October 12, a roundtable was held with the participation of the state, private funds, and experts, which was supposed to decide what the rules should be for paying the first pensions from the second insurance pillar, which is due to be in 2021. Or at least that's what they expected from the Association of Private Pension Funds, …
More »The biggest threat to the second pillar of the pension system
The biggest threat to the integrity and the general meaning of the second pillar of pension insurance are the ideas to make it more "social" or "solidarity" on the model of the first (state) pillar. We must never forget that, in theory, the state and private pillars of mandatory pension insurance should complement each other. One …
More »The second pension pillar and the fictional pyramids
Every year, with the voting of each new state budget, the topic of pensions is invariably raised. This year, the debate has been extremely heated, even reaching the point of statements that the second pillar of the pension system is a pyramid scheme. However, anyone who claims such a thing is lying to you, or simply does not …
More »What is the problem with second (private) pensions?
This week, a huge hysteria broke out in the public sphere regarding the payment of "second" pensions from mandatory private pension funds. It became clear that the amount of the combination of state and private pension may turn out to be less than if you take only the state one. And because no one explained what it actually …
More »EKIP in the media about pensions and health and tax reform proposals
In the midst of summer, our experts were sought after by the media on topics such as: healthcare, taxes and the tax system, pension system reform, stress tests of banks in the country. The month was marked by the extremely high activity of our health economist Arkadi Sharkov in the media space. In the program "Direct" on BulgariaOnAir television, …
More »Isn't it time to talk about Swiss-style pension contributions?
As you probably understood from the news, all pensions were increased by 5.7% today, and the maximum pension ceiling was raised from 910 to 1200 leva. In itself, for some, this increase is certainly a cause for joy. But in reality, it should be a cause for reflection. Because the latest actions …
More »How did our "Virtual Pension Fund" perform in its first year?
For over a year now, we at EKIP have been conducting a very interesting experiment. With the launch of the Virtual Pension Fund last year, we set ourselves the goal of illustrating what we mean when we talk about alternatives to the current pension system in Bulgaria. A system that, as you may know, we criticize extremely harshly. Because …
More »TEAM in the media about the new pension formula and healthcare problems
The topics of the participation of authors from the EKIP in March concerned: social security, healthcare, religion. Editor-in-chief Georgi Vuldjev, in the news of bTV, shared his concern about the falsification of documents for receiving a pension. According to him, there is no archival information available about what insurance contributions individuals have paid and to what extent …
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