spot_img
28 C
Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Making us dizzy with pension statistics

- Advertisement -

Most of our emotional outbursts over PNoy’s veto of the proposed P2,000 pension increase  have simmered down by this time, but  the statements that the  Social Security System officials have made in stonewalling this proposal linger in our minds. 

How can we—two million pensioners—forget? 

Their short and terse statements considered us ignorant and irresponsible for seeking that increase which they claimed would bankrupt SSS after 13 years, or by 2029. 

To them, the bill’s principal author—Rep. Neri Colmenares—was merely grandstanding. 

If at first PNoy has favored approving the bill to add a few million votes to his anointed candidates, he must have been egged by the uncompromising position of SSS into vetoing it on Jan. 12 or three days before it was supposed to have lapsed into law. 

- Advertisement -

PNoy’s stubborn defense of SSS would have been more acceptable had he done it much earlier. 

But he has already exhausted his quota for defending blindly his buddies and relatives—whom he had personally recruited to serve in his administration—for their monumental blunders: unconstitutional releases of billions of pesos for non-existing Disbursement Acceleration Program projects through Janet Napoles,  unauthorized execution of “Oplan Exodus” that resulted in the massacre of 44 Special Action Force commandos at Mamasapano, mismanagement of the world’s worst airport named after his father and its “laglag-bala” scams, and transformation of the once historically-famous Edsa into a fatal avenue of chaotic  traffic conditions and horrible light railway system.

SSS officials are making us believe that ideally, the social security program must have an actuarial fund life of 70 years, yet it demonstrates no qualms in admitting that its present fund life is only 26 years. 

This ideal actuarial life is nothing but a “kwentong barbero” and is only a myth. No social security program has ever reached this status for it could only happen if that program is linked to programmed increases in contribution rates in the next 70 years. 

The American pension program, for instance, has a fund life now of 19 years. Its trust fund asset reserves are projected to be depleted in 2034, yet its pensions are still automatically increased to keep up with inflation.

SSS never stops to convince us that everything is rosy in its operations. 

It is true—it collected a record P119.51 billion in contributions in 2014, increased to P40,000 its funeral expense benefits, and introduced several innovative  loan programs. 

Its pensioners—provided they are not more than 70 years old—can now borrow instantly through a few selected banks P50,000 at an interest rate of 1.25 percent per month, with the loan repayment to come from future pensions. 

But wait a minute, isn’t that 1.25 percent monthly interest rate a bit high when converted to its equivalent annual interest rate of 16 percent?  

Maybe, this is its investment strategy for recovering the P15 billion it has lost in the stock market recently.

For these self-declared achievements, SSS officials have regularly granted themselves performance bonuses. 

Fantastic and out-of-this-world is the formula they use in granting performance bonuses to their board members—100 percent of the per diems that they have been authorized to receive in one year. 

They must have imported this bonus formula from Timbuktu. 

Surely, it was not invented by its board members who are supposed to represent the interests of the country’s workers, employers, and the general public. After all, they were appointed by PNoy because of their “adequate knowledge and experience regarding social security.” 

“Collection efficiency is not the solution,” their chosen one lectured to us while disclosing that the “33 million members pay an average of P1,100 per month” at “an average of nine months per year.” 

These are the members whom PNoy and SSS officials would not want prejudiced with the granting of that P2,000 pension increase and the consequential bankruptcy of the system.

But surely—if only SSS officials had done their basic arithmetic correctly—they would have calculated and thus collected P326.7 billion from the 33 million members who pay P1,100 in monthly contributions for nine months, or almost triple than the P119.51 billion that they collected in 2014. 

They would not admit having problems collecting, yet they refuse to increase our monthly pensions that average P3,200 only. 

This makes my senior citizen friends and me dizzy, but fortunately not all.

While Jorge Banal Sr. and his Federation of Senior Citizens Association of the Philippines are settling for a P1,000 pension increase that would be supported by a staggered contribution rate increase, our progressive legislators—Bayan Muna’s Neri Colmenares and Gabriela’s Luz Ilagan—still pursue doggedly their advocacy for a congressional reversal of PNoy’s veto.

Rep. Martin Romualdez opted to file a courteous resolution urging SSS “to disclose its current and real financial standing.” We would have suggested that he file, instead, a strongly-worded resolution mandating it to clarify its dizzying statistical statements. 

But for the sake of transparency, SSS officials should simply publish the unedited executive summary of its latest actuarial valuation report in the same way that its American model does.

- Advertisement -

LATEST NEWS

Popular Articles