The law on pension reform passed by the Verkhovna Rada ensures stability of the pension system and protection of the most vulnerable segments of the population, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim has said.

"We've been following the pension reform very closely, and we think that the pension reform was once again a very courageous reform... We think that the reform is robust enough, so we'll find a way to ensure that the poorest benefit the most, that the pension system is sustainable," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Jim Yong Kim noted that the pension system would have been more successful if the law had not been amended at the last minute.

"We're very much aware of the additional articles that were put in, but we feel that working with the [social policy] ministry there are ways of ensuring that the poor are targeted. In other words, we're focusing on making the pension reform work in the form that it currently is in. Of course, it would have been better if the articles weren't added to the reform law," he said.

As reported, the adoption of the law on pension reform is one of the key conditions for the completion of the fourth review under the program of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which opens up the way for obtaining the fifth tranche of the loan.

Earlier, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in a joint letter to the Ukrainian government expressed their fears about the amendments made to the bill on the pension reform (No. 6614) when it was prepared for second reading.