The almost unexpected announcement of the project for a Universal Guaranteed Pension and its so far rapid processing in Parliament is undoubtedly positive news for a significant part of the population: that of older adults who receive miserable pensions granted by the system created more than 40 years ago. But, without prejudice to recognizing the value of this initiative, we cannot, however, fail to mention a couple of elements that are being ignored.
First: The project does NOT touch, at all, the questioned system created by DL 3,500 of 1981. The self-financed pensions provided by this system are still calculated with the same parameters used so far. The same questioned tables of life expectancy and calculation of profitability for the purposes of annual recalculations, in the case of Scheduled Retirement, the majority modality among the pensioned population. It should be noted that the only effective reason why the questioned tables have not managed to be modified is that the AFPs seek to prevent pensioners from withdrawing a greater amount of their balances monthly and try, successfully so far, to retain the pensioners’ funds for longer in order to deliver them as an inheritance. The latter is not such either, since it is a very particular “inheritance”: it is delivered in installments. Thus, the financial business, the main objective of the system created in 1981, is not affected.
Second: The president of the AFP Association quickly came out to point out that the initiative of the PGU “going in the right direction”. It wasn’t. Once again the AFP system comes out unscathed. It already had a rescue of great importance when the Solidarity Pillar was created. By then it was already clear that the system had failed. The extreme defenders of the system usually point out that the distribution systems “they have gone bankrupt all over the world”, which is false. What did go bankrupt, and many years ago, is the AFP system imposed in Chile. Only the installation of the Solidarity Pillar, with the Solidarity Pension Contribution that increases self-financed pensions and Basic Solidarity Pensions for those who had not contributed in their working life, came to partially hide the reality that began to be evident as soon as the first pensions began to be paid under the AFP system.
Thus, it seems that for now the most appropriate strategy is to encourage the PGU initiative to prosper and materialize. However, this must be taken as an initial step and rather as a complement to what is still pending: the profound reformulation of the forced savings system. The current opposition must not fall again, as so many times in recent years, into the temptation to postpone the approval of the PGU project to avoid that the merit of this initiative remains as a legacy of the current president. Or insist on “creativity”, incorporating into the project indications that will only delay or rightly prevent its approval. Examples of this creativity are, for example, the already appealed proposal of the “marraqueta” that Senator Goic presents as her own when in fact it was initially proposed by the former presidential candidate Parisi, several years ago. Given the origin of the idea, rightly populist, the senator would do well to refrain from continuing to insist on it. The important thing now is not to flood the processing of the PGU project. Take it forward and go for more in the next administration.
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
