One of my buddies i still keep in contact with from my early 20’s days alerted me to the new social security agreement between Japan and Australia that actually came into effect on January 1 2009, thanks Garry.
Doing a little research i’ve come up with the following, i suggest you dig deeper and see how it affects you as everyone’s situation differs;
“Where Australians have made contributions to Japan’s social security system, but not enough to qualify for a benefit, they would be able to count relevant periods worked in Australia to help them get a Japanese pension.”
This was the sentence that interests me most, being able to take into account my years in the workforce in Australia, because in all honesty, i don’t see myself working here for another 23 yrs to be eligible to claim the money i have contributed. The press release also goes on to say ….
The Australian age pension and Japanese old-age pension are covered under the Agreement.
The Agreement also includes provisions to avoid double superannuation coverage of workers sent temporarily between Australia and Japan. Double superannuation coverage arises where an employee is sent from one country to work temporarily in the other country and superannuation contributions are required to be made in both countries for the employee.
The Australia-Japan Social Security Agreement is expected to come into effect on 1 January 2009.
At the end of the day i’m not going to rely on the superannuation i’ve contributed in either country to fund my retirement, it would be nice to know i can get my grubby little hands on both amounts at some stage down the track though.
For more info i suggest you check out the detail agreement in English and in Japanese. I’m yet to really establish exactly what this means to me but the fact that agreements like this are on the table must be a positive thing. Other useful links can be found here and here.
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It is good to see nations work out agreements like this one. For once government actually did something that will have a 100% positive effect on many people`s daily lives.
This will be great if the years count in both countries.
I believe it does, it seems to be a pretty reciprocal agreement and bi directional agreement.