President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced today a 12.49 percent hike in pensions that will come effective on September 1, marking the second increase for the retired as established in the government-sponsored Social Mobility Act. Minimum pensions accumulate a 33 percent rise so far this year, reaching $4,299 pesos.
8 million people will be benefited by the increase. “Ours is not a judicial policy, nor because it is in our interest. It is because we believe our retired must be re-compensated,” Ms. Kirchner said at the beginning of her national address.
Speaking for an hour from the Bicentenary Women Hall of the government house, Cristina Fernández said social security for the elderly has reached 97 percent, praising such “achievement” has been acknowledged by international organisms such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), that say “Argentina is the regional country with the highest level of social security coverage.”
Furthermore, the head of state explained minimum pensions will be jumping from 3,821 pesos to 4,299 pesos while the average will be going from 6,811 pesos to 7,671 pesos. Maximum pensions will go from 27,000 pesos to 31,495 pesos. At that point, Cristina Kirchner said “although there are people in Argentina that collect – by means of a judicial sentences -, more than 200,000 pesos” and rapidly went one to highlight that “social security investment” in 2015 reached more than 551 million pesos.
“The opposition argued and even some of our own partners that the index was bad,” the president said referring to the parliamentary debate when MPs discussed the Social Mobility Act, adding the ANSES social security office made “social investment, not welfare,” with the government carrying out economic measures that are “good,” accounting for 9.7 percent of the GDP.
“It finances consumption, social investment. It is not welfare. It is economics of the good stuff. And that is convenient to the country.”
The rally took place four days ahead of the PASO primaries that will have Victory Front (FpV) party presidential hopeful Daniel Scioli among the key competitors.
Besides Scioli, Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández and Lower House chairman Julián Domínguez were present at the act, both of them seeking the FpV nomination in the province of Buenos Aires.
On Sunday, a TV report accused the head of ministers of being the “mastermind” of a high-profile drug-related case that shocked society here back in 2008, with Fernández not only pointing fingers at the Clarín media group that aired the report – one of the government’s leading media critics -, but also at Domínguez himself.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald