The average yield of private retirement fund management companies (who handled 9.3bn RUR worth of pension savings) outstripped the inflation rate and amounted to 20.7% in 2006.

Unlike in 2005, however, no company was able to get past the point of 50%, reports Kommersant newspaper. Most enterprises only managed to counterbalance the inflation rate if their annual yield amounted to more than 9%.

According to Kommersant, Vnesheconombank, the state-owned management company that handles 267bn RUR worth of pension savings, has been ranked last for the first time over the last few years (its profitability only reached the point of 5.7% a year). This means that the main bulk of the citizens’ pension savings has actually devaluated.