Pensions Reform, Privatisation and Restructuring in the Transition : Unfinished Business or Inappropriate Agendas

Renewed policy-maker interest in the potentialities for interaction between private pensions and accelerated SOE privatisations rarely represents genuinely strategic thinking. Current policy sequencing seems significantly misplaced, most particularly in their focus on the prioritised stimulation of the private pensions sector. The available evidence in favour of this strategic choice is far from clear-cut in its implications. In practice, it is realistic to anticipate that even mandatory requirements for worker affiliation to private pensions may neither prove to be the magic ingredient for ensuring rapid financial system deepening nor provide the guaranteed impetus to coherent private sector development that is expected