Minister of Finance Sinisa Mali stated today that pensioners expect a significant increase in pensions next year, in accordance with the so-called “Swiss formula”, and that the intention is to correct this formula so that pensions grow even faster and reach the projected level of 430 to 440 euros average pensions, until 2025.
“The government approaches the topic responsibly, such as the position of the oldest citizens in our country, so that the lump sum assessments that can be heard about correcting the ‘Swiss formula’ to the detriment of pensioners can only damage the country’s reputation and only strike at the sensitive sentiment of our fellow citizens. Otherwise, they feel threatened due to the health crisis caused by the corona virus pandemic,” Minister Sinisa Mali told Tanjug.
He said that making these lump sum grades can be called, in simple vocabulary, making accounts without an innkeeper, and he assessed that it has become a frequent endemic phenomenon in our society.
President Aleksandar Vucic was very clear when he said that, and I will now repeat it once again – there will be an even bigger increase in pensions than predicted by the previous “Swiss formula”. The current “Swiss formula” predicts that pensions will be adjusted to inflation with 50 percent, and with average wage growth by 50 percent. So, if the formula is corrected, the retirement income will be higher in the coming years in relation to the amount that would allow the application of that previous formulas,” explained Mali.
According to him, together with the International Monetary Fund, an optimal and sustainable model will be sought, which will not endanger public finances in any way.
He added that it will certainly not happen that the surplus in the pension fund is provided from the additional tax burden of existing workers, but that the PIO fund is filled with payments of contributions of workers who will be additionally employed.
“We want to maintain the economic balance between the active and economically inactive population and not to be reduced to the relationship that one employee supports one pensioner. We will not succeed in our intentions if a working contingent of young people leaves the country. That is why I would like to I tell young people – stay in the country, we offer you a chance, we create conditions for a quality life. Only with the preservation of that evenness and additionally with investment cycles, cleverly designed economic policy, high growth rates exceeding five and more estimates can we reach that goal,” considers Mali.
He reiterated that they do not understand the bad intention and desire to make things worse than they are.
“Our oldest ones have survived many years of transition, the problems that followed in the now former socialist companies, the economic crisis, inflation, periods of political uncertainty and all that is a big enough trauma. But now, when, in addition to all life’s misfortunes, the health crisis, harassing them by saying that they will go towards reducing the planned increases in their pensions, is just a sign of huge irresponsibility and ignorance of individuals who present data, for which it is not known exactly what they are based on,” concluded Mali, Tanjug reports.
