{
  "title": "Towards an Inclusive, Equitable and Sustainable National Pension System in Iraq",
  "publication": "Analytical Notes, April 30, 2024",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/analytical-notes/issues/2024/04/30/towards-an-inclusive-equitable-and-sustainable-national-pension-system-in-iraq-544930",
  "canonical": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/analytical-notes/issues/2024/04/30/towards-an-inclusive-equitable-and-sustainable-national-pension-system-in-iraq-544930",
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  "summary": "A pension system is at the heart of social protection. By ensuring income security for older persons and other vulnerable groups, it prevents poverty, reduces inequality, and facilitates consumption smoothing.",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Overview",
      "content": "- A pension system is at the heart of social protection by ensuring income security for older persons and other vulnerable groups, preventing poverty, reducing inequality, and facilitating consumption smoothing.\n- Pensions influence labor market choices and have important fiscal implications.\n- Iraq’s current pension system is described as highly fragmented, inequitable, and inefficient."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Key findings",
      "content": "- Coverage and adequacy\n  - The current system fails to provide adequate income protection to most of Iraq’s old age population and other vulnerable groups, such as survivors and persons with disability.\n- Fiscal sustainability\n  - The public sector pension is already putting substantial pressure on the budget and is potentially unsustainable given the projected acceleration of the total pension bill due to recent policy changes.\n- Labor market and structural implications\n  - The pension system sets an uneven playing field between the public and private sectors, contributing to the continued expansion of an already outsized civil service.\n  - This dynamic is holding back economic diversification and private sector growth.\n- Overall assessment\n  - A comprehensive pension reform is urgently needed to address fragmentation, inequity, inefficiency, coverage gaps, adequacy shortfalls, fiscal pressures, and adverse labor market incentives."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Reform objectives and proposed approach",
      "content": "- Collaborative authorship\n  - The policy note is based on collaboration between the IMF, ILO and the World Bank.\n- Primary aims (as stated)\n  - 1) Provide an assessment of the existing public and private pension system across the four dimensions: fiscal sustainability; labor market implications; coverage; and adequacy of benefits.\n  - 2) Develop and propose options to adjust the pension system with a view to making it fiscally sustainable, more inclusive and adequate, and conducive to private sector development and labor market formalization.\n  - 3) Provide a basis to engage key stakeholders—including workers, employers organizations and the civil society—on strategies to achieve a more inclusive system, importantly by including workers in the informal economy, female workers, workers with disabilities, and other disadvantaged groups.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- Toward an Inclusive, Equitable, and Sustainable National Pension System in Iraq\n  - Toward an Inclusive, Equitable, and Sustainable National Pension System in Iraq (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Toward an Inclusive, Equitable, and Sustainable National Pension System in Iraq (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/analytical-notes/issues/2024/04/30/towards-an-inclusive-equitable-and-sustainable-national-pension-system-in-iraq-544930"
    }
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    "Published: April 30, 2024",
    "Series: Analytical Notes",
    "DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400269288.064",
    "A pension system is at the heart of social protection by ensuring income security for older persons and other vulnerable groups, preventing poverty, reducing inequality, and facilitating consumption smoothing.",
    "Pensions influence labor market choices and have important fiscal implications.",
    "Iraq’s current pension system is described as highly fragmented, inequitable, and inefficient.",
    "Coverage and adequacy",
    "Fiscal sustainability",
    "Labor market and structural implications",
    "Overall assessment",
    "Collaborative authorship",
    "Primary aims (as stated)",
    "**Toward an Inclusive, Equitable, and Sustainable National Pension System in Iraq**"
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