SP: The lie of pension increase

13/07/2012 00:00

The Socialist Party accused the government of infringing the law by
increasing pensions less than the official level of inflation, which is
mandatory by law.

In 2006, the current government decided to oblige INSTAT to calculate a special inflation indicator for retired people, which, according to Mr. Beqja, is higher than the growing number of pensioners.

“If you take the INSTAT figures for the price increase of different groups of goods and services, but by executing the specific weight of the decision of 2006, the inflation for retired people is 4.3%. The 4% increase is not bigger than the inflation increase, while this is mandatory by law”, Beqja declared.

But the 4% increase for retired people in cities, as declared by the government, affects only the minimal pension without changing the compensations. This makes the payment for retired people to not be higher than 4%, but only 3.4%.

“The real pension increase is 445 ALL. For having at least a 4.3% increase, it should be 571 ALL. Every pensioner needs 127 ALL more each month, not to improve his life, but to increase the pension as the inflation level. The government has taken from them 22% of the increase”, Beqja declared.

But a lower pension increase than the inflation is not the only point in which the government has infringed the law for retired people. The decision of 2006 says that the pension index date is May 1st of each year, and not July 1st. The two month difference deepens with the debt that the government owns to the retired people, only to have it in the index.

“We have a 3.4% increase for 6 months. Legally we should have 4.3% for eight months. This makes the government’s debt to the retired people even deeper. In order to preserve the buying power of the pension money, the gap until the end of the year must go to 1890 ALL per pensioner, or 41% less than the legal obligation for preserving the living level of the last year or the buying power of the past year”, Beqja declared.

The public finance crisis of the last three years has obliged the government to decrease the pace of pension increases. This year, according to the Socialist Party, the 4% increase in cities and the 5% increase in rural areas is the lowest in the last decade.

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