The Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, said that as a result of the discussion of the pension reform bill, the entity issued a concept of fiscal viability in which he says that the solidarity pillar requires resources.
He mentioned that in the contributory pillar, which is the axis of the discussion, it reveals that in A scenario without reform would have an imbalance in pension liabilities of 59.8% and after the reform it drops to 54%, with a threshold of three minimum wages.
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For the minister, if the threshold were “four minimum salaries, the fund created would last until 2074, if there were three, it would last until 2070, if there were two and a half salaries, until 2069, with two salaries until 2065, with one and a half salaries until 2050 and one minimum salary “There is no fund. Colpensiones would not have money to accumulate, since the money comes to it and is paid to the pensioners.”
“The higher the threshold, the employee's payment commitment can be met and the public dissavings would be less,” the minister emphasized.
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He said that in pensions we know that “the competition between the two systems does not work and what happens is that in recent years thousands of members have left the funds for Colpensiones and if we do not carry out the reform we will have a greater exit, which takes away resources to the funds, but it does not solve the pensions of Colombians.
The Minister of Finance said that “the funds register a profitability and that is what they are for.” But he assured that of the $405 billion that they have under administration, $146 billion is in TES and the main reason is that it gives returns, that is, from dissavings since they are interest payments on public debt.”
For its part, Asofondos specified that Colpensiones has more pensioners than the funds because it is an older regime. “The average age of the RPM (Average Premium Regime) of Colpensiones is 51 years while that of the RAIS (Individual Savings Regime with Solidarity) is 36 years.”
He also said that in the RAIS the contribution that goes to the individual account is only 11.5% while what goes to the Common Fund is 13%. This difference generates a 30% lower pension. That is why the systems are not comparable.
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For Asofondos, in the flows of the AFPs, Minister Ricardo Bonilla It does not take into account the income from pension bonuses and pension insurance, as he said on stage. However, that is a mistake, since those resources are those that finance the payment of allowances.
The union assured that “the Minister measures national savings only as what exists in the Savings Fund, however savings are also what remains in the individual accounts of the members. So if we look at public + private savings as a whole, between “The more the threshold is lowered, the more savings we have.”
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Asofondos considers that the minister refers to the returns obtained by the AFPs as being obtained in part by the interests paid by the TES bonds and that this is inefficient. However, what the Government does not take into account is that with a pensioner in the RPM the Government assumes a debt at 7% in real terms while with the capital market it is 4% in real terms.
