DUTERTE OKAYS SSS PENSION HIKE

But active members will have to pay bigger premium contributions

President Rodrigo Duterte has approved a P1,000 increase in the monthly pension of Social Security System (SSS) members effective this month, his spokesperson said Tuesday.

“President Duterte has approved a P1,000 hike this month,” Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a press conference.

The bad news is premium contributions will also increase starting May this year, said SSS chair Amado Valdez.

Abella said premium contributions would increase by 1.5 percent yearly, or to 12.5 percent this year from the current 11-percent rate.

Abella said the additional total contribution would range from the original P15 to P740.

During the same press conference, Valdez welcomed the President’s decision and vowed to cooperate with the government.

“We want to thank profusely our President for his sense of caring for our pensioners. We want to also thank the economic managers for their prudence in reminding us that we have to ensure the sustainability of the fund,” Valdez said.

“[We will] see to it that the SSS will do its duty by seeing to it that we have efficient effort to collect [funds],” he added.

Valdez said the P1,000 increase would be distributed to SSS pensioners within this month.

But SSS president Emmanuel Dooc said there might be a “slight delay” in the distribution of the increase because the SSS has to “recompute” its finances.

“There might be a slight delay but we will do our best to resolve this immediately,” he said. Pensioners might receive the increase in February, he added.

Abella said the pension hike would be sourced from current SSS contributions and Investment Reserve Fund.

He said Duterte was not amenable to using taxpayers’ money to finance the increase since SSS is a private pension fund.

The initial proposal was to increase the pension of SSS members by P2,000. /