The Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, referred this Friday to the projects of self-loan of pension savings presented by different parliamentarians. In this regard, he said that withdrawals “are not help.”
“If you’re honest and you say, ‘look, this is doing wrong, why is a fourth, fifth or sixth retirement required if the previous ones had been so good?’ it’s a matter of looking a little further ahead, of looking at the consequences of the things that are done, of anticipating when a problem is going to occur. I believe that, in the end, citizens value it,” he said in a conversation with Radio Cooperativa.
“Citizens not only value being always told yes, but also explaining when there are things that cannot be done,” he added.
In that line, he said that “one has to understand that there must be some proportionality in things and what was an emergency, a really desperate situation, is very different from what is needed when the economy comes from a stage of overheating and where the main problem is inflation.”
In turn, he pointed out that the “fifth withdrawal was rejected by an absolute majority. Why? Because the majority of parliamentarians understood that a withdrawal did far more harm than good.”
He also expressed that “sometimes, when we talk about withdrawals, we talk about aid, but withdrawal is not a help.” In this regard, he said that “it helps that the State supports people, that they support them with transfers, with the possibility of lowering the costs of their purchases, such as the measures announced by the President yesterday. Getting people to spend their savings is not a help.”
Recall that there are three bills in Congress that seek to establish a self-loan of pension savings. Two of them – presented by deputies Pamela Jiles (IND) and René Alinco (IND) – seek to enable the withdrawal of 100% of savings, with the condition of reimbursing them in installments with a maximum term of five years.
The third project, of the PDG bench, seeks to enable the withdrawal of 15% of savings, with the obligation to return them in one to 60 installments.
For its part, the government’s pension reform also includes a self-loan, but more limited: it seeks to allow a maximum withdrawal of 5% of savings, with a limit of one million pesos. The refund mechanism includes a 2% increase in the social security contribution.
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