OREANDA-NEWS. February 28, 2011. "I set a task this year to raise the minimum pension to 1320 UAH. We will wait and see if the Government is able to perform that task. But I hope they will perform it. We had a discussion, we looked at our options and finally came to a common conclusion – pensions must be raised, and we will be working on that," President Viktor Yanukovych said, answering a question during the teleconference "Conversation with the Country."

Today, Viktor Yanukovych said, everybody understands that the country's current pension system is outdated and has no perspective. He reminded that last year, the Pension Fund was failing to provide for retirees’ needs with its deficit reaching 40 billion UAH.

This year, he said, the government managed to raise the revenues of the Pension Fund, which are expected to be about 120 billion UAH by the end of the year, making the expected deficit decrease to about 20 billion UAH.

The President also stressed that pension reform will focus primarily on the implementation of fair approach to the calculation of pensions.