[Uhmavano]

Shanghai to raise retirement age over pension deficit
Posted: 09 February 2010 1245 hrs


Shanghai skyline

SHANGHAI: Authorities in Shanghai will raise the city's retirement age to relieve pressure on the pension fund as they struggle to cope with an ageing population and falling birth rates, state media said Tuesday.

Vice Mayor Hu Yanzhao said the city's pension fund had fallen into a deficit as more than a fifth of the population had reached the end of their working lives, the Shanghai Daily reported, without giving a figure for the shortfall.

"We will put off the retirement age of citizens, especially for female professionals," Hu was quoted as telling a government meeting on Monday.

The retirement age is currently 60 for men and 50 or 55 for women, depending on the job, the report said.

Hu did not say by how many years the retirement age would be raised, but experts have recommended five years, the report said.

The number of people aged 60 and older in China's biggest city is expected to rise to 3.12 million this year, the report said.

Shanghai's head of family planning made headlines last year by encouraging couples to have two children if they qualified under exceptions to the country's one-child policy.

If both members of a couple are only children, they are allowed to have more than one child under the rules.

The attention given to the announcement highlighted the struggle between demographers alarmed by a shrinking workforce and greying population, and officials convinced that China has too many people, experts said.

Shanghai's former Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for his role in a massive pension scandal that rocked the city and the country when it came to light in 2006.

Dozens of senior Shanghai officials were tried and convicted in connection with the scandal, in which hundreds of millions of dollars were illegally siphoned from the city's pension fund for real estate investments.

- AFP/sc