The idea of withdrawing 10% of the planned funds so that the middle class can cope with the economic ravages of the pandemic divides the waters at all levels. Even in National Renewal, a party where his helm Mario Desbordes has been openly in favour of the that this is an initiative that should not be ruled out.
Overflows has had the support of some Members of the bench, but there are “heavyweights” within the collective that have publicly gone out to reduce the fumes to that option. One of them is Senator Andrés Allamand, who slammed the idea, on the grounds that encouraging the withdrawal of funds would be “a silver gift to people who don’t need it.”
Interviewed in TVN’s “National State,” the once – and defeated – presidential pre-candidate argued that “a person, who is a young professional, who is 30 years old and who has in his fund 20 million pesos, and next to him there is a person who is 60 years old, who has the same 20 million pesos, and who will ultimately have the same weights, and who will ultimately have the same , quote, help. I mean, in a situation where we have to go help the people who need it, I’m going to say it brutally, we’re going to be giving money to people who don’t need it.”
Allamand’s phrase on the withdrawal of resources draws attention because days ago he stated that “the AFP funds are workers’ funds and in this emergency the logical thing is for the state to help them.” What is not striking is that it opposes an idea of Overflow, taking into account that during the week he announced that he will be playing for the list opposing his driving in the next inmates, accusing the current helmsman of having “the wrong orientation”.
The position of MPs
On Monday, however, Desbordes, along with several members of the bench, confirmed that withdrawal of funds is a concrete option to go to middle-class aid, although priority is made by measures such as leasing allowance, zero-cost soft credits for paying dividends, and direct transfers of funds via social programs.
“The 10% are open to study, to the extent that there is no other possibility. That’s what we said. And we want to put other possibilities on the table,” said helmsman RN.
Overflow insisted that “with other alternatives on the table such as soft loans, transfers of funds, support for mortgages or for lease subsidies, we obviously prefer those alternatives. We agree that’s going to be studied. There is a proposal that some Parliamentarians of the Committee on finance have put forward, but always on the understanding that it would be desirable for it not to be used and it would be final, finally, if there is nothing before,” the member added.
In the same vein, deputy Sebastian Torrealba argued that “there are other previous tools”, so the withdrawal of pension funds has to be the “last” option, an idea ratified by other of his colleagues.
For Mr Pablo Prieto, parliamentarian for the Maule, “the 10 per cent we are open to studying it, to the extent that there is no other possibility, and we have said so. And we want to put other possibilities on the table, that’s why we present these alternatives that go live for the benefit of the middle class.”
In his turn, the deputy for Colonel, Leonidas Romero argued that “the 10 percent we will study, to the extent that there is no other possibility. That’s what we said. In fact, I submitted a draft resolution last April, where I call on the President of the Republic to sponsor with the utmost urgency a draft law that will temporarily amend Decree Law No. 3,500, or failing that, to sponsor an exceptional law, and therefore allow AFP’s members to withdraw an amount in order to cover basic inputs , but we also want to put other possibilities on the table that go live benefit of the middle class.”
More emphatic, MP Andrés Celis criticized those who oppose the idea of discussing the withdrawal of planned funds. In the opinion of the parliamentarian,”today in our country there is a total disconnect between the real Chile, the country where one meets middle-class people on every corner, with that other Chile that between four walls or on a second floor of La Moneda, they do analyses without reflecting that there is that large segment called a middle class, which is receiving the severe blow of cessation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic”
