The withdrawal of articles on pension mobility from the megaproject predicts that in March pensioners, pensioners and recipients of social benefits would have a loss of purchasing power of approximately 36%. compared to December.
And then, starting from April “if there are no changes in the law or exceptional measures such as new bonuses or extraordinary increases, the fate of pensioners will depend on what happens with inflation: if the rise in prices slows down, the rate will slowly increase purchasing power of these benefits. Otherwise they will continue in the current situation of deterioration,” explained Rafael Rofman, researcher at CIPPEC (Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth).
The 36% worsening is due to the fact that inflation in December was 25.5% and a price increase of 23/25% is expected in January and another 20% in February. AS, the cumulative increase December-January-February would be equal to 88.3% and in December the salary increase was 20.87%.
Consequently, pensions and pensions will suffer a worsening of almost 36% with the aggravating circumstance that Lower wages stopped receiving VAT refunds up to $18,800.
In March pensioners and pensioners will receive the increase according to the current mobility formula. It is estimated that it could be around 30% against inflation which in the first quarter of the year could be around 80%.
This sharp deterioration adds to that of recent years.
At the values of December 2023, according to IARAF (Argentine Institute of Fiscal Analysis) “given that the average monthly inflation of the last 6 years was 5%, real pensions posted losses throughout the period. If we add the percentages of lost assets between 2018 and 2023, it turns out that without bonuses they would be equivalent to 13.7 minimum assets for 2017 (114.2% per year for 12 months) and with bonuses equal to 9.4 minimum wages in 2017.”
In 2023, with the inflationary leap in December, pensioners and pensioners had a loss of between 14.2% – in the case of those who received the bonus for minimum salaries – and 32.3% for average salaries and more tall.
In this way, between September 2017 and December 2023, the average worsening of pensions is 40%, with a drop in minimum assets of 30% and the middle 55% and above.
Rofman explains that the law effective in 2021 “has two serious problems: uses very procyclical variables – they improve rapidly when the economy is doing well, but decline rapidly when there are problems – and which have a strong lag: the increases granted each quarter depend on what happened with wages and receipts between 15 and 3 months Before”.
And he adds: “Although we do not yet have all the data to calculate it, it is expected that the March increase not only does not offset this, but deepen the fall, which would reach almost 50% compared to December 2019. From there, if there are no changes in the law or exceptional measures such as new bonuses or extraordinary increases, the fate of pensioners will depend on what happens with inflation: if the average increase if prices fall, their purchasing power will slowly increase, otherwise they will continue in the current situation.”
Source: Clarin
