IMPLEMENTATION OF FOREIGN EXPERIENCE IN REFORMING UKRAINE’S PENSION SUPPORT SYSTEM

The solidarity pension support system of Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union has already been one of the main objects of criticism in the society for 26 years of independence. Ukrainian pensioners believe that their assigned pensions are too low, the working population states that their premiums are high, and oversea and European advisers have expressed their dissatisfaction with the chronic budget deficit of the Pension Fund of Ukraine (PFU) and insist on a gradual increase of the retirement age for the citizens to balance it. In recent years, the current pension system is in a state of «permanent reforming» the necessity of which is caused not only by moving to a market economy relations, but also finding new models of the pension support due to the demographic pessimistic prospects of our country in the future. The most significant achievement of the reforms was the transition to the multi-level model of the pension support system in 2004 which was developed in the early 90s of the last century by the World Bank and has been successfully tested in many countries of Europe and the world. However, the main threat to the pension systems of most countries is the «revolution of aging» of population that covered Ukraine. Therefore, the specifics of social and economic and demographic situation in Ukraine demands the necessity of justification of fundamentally new model of multi-level pension system that best takes into account the positive international experience of reforming the pension support system, on the one hand, and on another hand the specific Ukrainian mentality, the existing state of the national economy and social moods in the modern Ukrainian society. The purpose of the article is the research and generalization of foreign experience of reforming the pension support systems, identifying common and distinctive features of national pension systems in OECD member states and justification on the basis the recommendations for further reforming the national pension support system. Having examined the features of functioning the pension systems of OECD member countries, we can distinguish their differences and similarities with the domestic pension system:  the pension system in most of these countries (except New Zealand and Australia), as well as in Ukraine consists of three levels;  the coexistence of mandatory and voluntary components of the accumulating funded pension system that complement each other and enable to provide a decent level of material security of citizens after their retirement;  the promotion of development of the private pension insurance preserving a strict control for the control of nonstate pension funds from the state. In some countries the government manages the resources of the accumulating funded pension system through a specially authorized institution;  for the OECD member countries and a number of other European countries five main types of models of administering the collection of insurance premiums are characterized;  some parity in the distribution of the fiscal burden of paying contributions for pension insurance between the employers and the employees, as well as a significant degree of differentiation of insurance premiums in individual countries;  the retirement age in most OECD member countries is set no lower than 65 for men and 60 for women;  early retirement is granted for 2-5 years earlier if a person meets certain requirements, including a required minimum insurance period;  for each full or partial month (quarter, year) of the early retirement age the early pension amount is reduced by early fixed percentage;  the deferred retirement is stimulated by its increase (the rate increase is ranging from 4.2% to 12% for every additional year of service), the term of the deferral is from 1 to 5 years with the possibility of a combination of old-age pension with the income from employment;  narrowing the scope of the accumulating funded component of the pension system up to the complete abandonment of its use because of its unstable financial situation and the negative impact on the state budget. Positive international experience of reforming the pension system should be used only after a thorough examination and its maximum adaptation to the local domestic conditions in order to avoid possible negative effects related primarily to the differences not only in the economic, regulatory, legal and institutional support of social processes but in the income and mentality of the population.