Restructuring measures mintaszakaszok

Restructuring measures. (i) Early pension It appears from preparatory legislative work that during a three year period as of 1 January 2003 until the end of 2005 Mesta AS could offer employees transferred from the Production Department within the Public Road Administration an arrange- ment according to which they would be able to retire with pension at the age of 60 rather than the normal retirement age of 67 years. Both state owned and private companies have the right to make use of this instrument. In legislative preparatory works the State funded costs of offe- ring early pension arrangements (including administration costs representing about 5 % of total costs) were estimated to amount to NOK 911 million (1). However, the Norwegian authorities have subsequently explained that in August 2005 accrued costs were merely NOK 113 million and that the amount of total esti- mated costs would be NOK 637 million (rather than NOK 911 million). The reason for this reduction is, according to the Norwegian authorities, that it was subsequently realised that the workforce could be reduced by means of normal retirement which reduced the need to offer early pension arrangements (in fact, only 470 individuals have benefited from early pension) (2).