ZUS to begin calculating "initial capital" pension premiums of 13.5 mln Poles

The Social Insurance Company (ZUS) will soon begin calculating the "initial capital" - sum of pension premiums paid by people who began working before Jan. 1, 1999, when the pension reforms came into effect. Under the old pension system, ZUS did not have individual accounts for each worker, meaning that it did not know how much it had received in premiums for a given individual. It does have such information for the period after Jan. 1, 1999, but now, using computer simulation, ZUS must calculate how much it has received in premiums for the time before the reforms came into effect for some 13.5 million people. People working before the reforms who were older than 50 will receive pensions calculated according to the old system. ZUS only received the calculation rules for initial capital from the Labor Ministry last Wednesday. According to the pension reform law, it has five years since the reform came into effect, to make all the calculations. (Gazeta Wyborcza, page 7)