The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations has sent this Wednesday to the Cortes Generales the report of the Reserve Fund for pensions corresponding to 2022, in which it has included its forecasts that this piggy bank end this year with 5,347 million, which is its highest level since November 2018, when the year ended with 5,043 million. Since then, the fund has remained in a kind of hibernation —around 2,100 million euros—, despite the fact that the system has registered large red numbers in this period, since the Government decided not to empty this fund and maintain that endowment, even if symbolic, without being used during the last four years to compensate for the pension deficit, which is what it was created for.
However, since January 2023 the piggy bank from pensions has begun to receive funds again, with income from the so-called intergenerational equity mechanism (MEI), which came into force at the beginning of this year, and which consists of an additional contribution to Social Security of 0.6% ( 0.5% is paid by companies and the remaining 0.1% by workers). It is expected that all the collection obtained with this overquoting between 2023 and 2032 will feed the reserve fund.
The value of the fund as of December 31, 2022 was 2,141 million euros. But, since that date, it has received endowments for a value of 710 million euros for social contributions from the aforementioned MEI, corresponding to the months of January to April. To this income we must add the yields obtained to date for what is contained in the fund until reaching the current 2,859 million euros. In addition to the new contributions of the equity mechanism, to this piggy bank mutual surpluses are incorporatedyes Social Security collaborators, after allocating the stabilization reserve for professional contingencies. With all this, the Escrivá ministry intends to reach the aforementioned 5,347 million.
The new design of the MEI was approved in the second phase of the pension reform, which the Government agreed only with the unions, and included several increases in social contributions paid by employers and workers. This increase in contributions is intended to increase the system’s income, given the persistence of the Social Security deficit —which, according to calculations by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, will end the year at around 0.5% due to to the more than 15,000 million extra expenses that the revaluation of pensions with the CPI has entailed— and before the avalanche of retirees born in the babyboom who will retire en masse between the middle of the current decade and the year 2047.
Although other calculations by expert economists add the spending of the passive classes (pensions of various groups of civil servants who joined the Administration before 2011) with which the deficit of the pension system would exceed 1.6% of GDP this year. And if the more than 20,000 million of the so-called improper Social Security expenses that are now paid with taxes (before they were financed with contributions) are not discounted, this deficit would multiply by two.
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