ECONOMY

Pension spending to drop 5.7 bln in four years

Pension spending to drop 5.7 bln in four years

The average main pension will amount to just 620 euros a month in four years’ time and the average supplementary pension to no more than 144 euros, according to data included in the midterm fiscal plan that government recently passed.

A study by the Group for Social and Labor Rights (OKED), headed by professor Savvas Robolis, showed that pension expenditure in 2021 will be reduced by 5.7 billion euros rather than the 3.1 billion the government has pledged to its creditors.

If pensions were to actually freeze at an average gross amount of 722 euros, the total pension expenditure of the state in 2021 would come to 32.8 billion euros.

However, the midterm fiscal plan puts pension spending that year at 27.1 billion euros, thereby taking the pension spending cut to 5.7 billion euros.

The writers of the study argue that, taking into account the rate of new retirees and the number of pensioner deaths since 2000 while using actuarial systems of projection, spending on pensions would have to come to 32.8 billion euros in 2021, as the current figure of 30.2 billion would have to grow in proportion to the number of pensioners.

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