Prague, Oct 17 (CTK) – The Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) want to introduce a special fund for the payment of Czech pensions to which mining fees and profits of state-controlled firms would go, KDU-CSL deputy chairman Jan Bartosek told a press conference on Tuesday, three days before the general election.
This fund would become the second pillar of the current pension system that would continue to be based on the pay-as-you-go model, Bartosek said.
“We want dividends from state-controlled companies, such as the Budvar brewery and the Lesy CR forest management firm, to be sent to this fund. Profits from state property and possibly from mining minerals should be sent to it, too,” he said.
The fund is to secure the financing of pensions at a time when the condition of the Czech economy would be worse than now.
“We want pensioners to feel secure that there is a fund from which contributions to pensions would go. Everybody who has a job has the right to receive a dignified pension,” Bartosek said.
KDU-CSL leader Pavel Belobradek said the fund should be separated from the state budget in order to guarantee that the money is used for nothing else than pensions.
The Christian Democrats also propose that mothers be allowed to get retired sooner if they wanted.
For each child she raises, a woman could get retired one year sooner without her pension being lowered, Bartosek said about the plan.
The KDU-CSL also proposes a joint pension insurance of married couples in order to avoid the situation that a divorced woman has a lower pension because she primarily focused on the raising of children, while her husband followed his professional career.
The party would like parents of two or more children to pay lower taxes than now. This measure would encourage people to have more children, help slow down the population ageing and the deal with the threatening lack of working people sending money to the state pension account in future.
Bartosek said the measure would cost the state roughly 3.8 billion crowns a year, but he said the families would spend more money thanks to it.
The Christian Democrats is the smallest partner of the outgoing centre-left government that did not present any pension reform, but only scrapped the second pillar of the pension system introduced by the previous right-wing government. A reform of the system was discussed, however, no agreement on it was reached.
