The government is upholding the 13.8% early retirement penalty imposed this year despite the upward revision to 15.2% of the cut to be applied, according to final National Institute of Statistics (INE) data released yesterday . The statutory retirement age will also not change next year, which will remain at 66 years and 4 months and, according to the statistics office, should rise to 66 years and six months. This is because the executive decided to be guided by the preliminary statistics released by INE last November.
“Successive governments have always been based on the provisional values of the INE, with the aim of ensuring the timely determination of the relevant coefficients for access to a pension and for its calculation,” justifies the Ministry of Labor headed by Ana Mendes Godinho , when DN/Cash.
The statement was fundamental, as the regulation published late last year had already stipulated that the sustainability factor would be 13.8%, leaving the legal age for accessing retirement at 66 years and four months. However, the general law always refers to INE data.
For example, “the Government will not amend Regulation No. 292/2022 of December 9, which determines the normal age for access to the old-age pension in 2024, thus ensuring the stability of the determination of relevant coefficients for access to a pension ( retirement age) and for its calculation (sustainability factor and retirement age),” the ministry said. For example, “the sustainability factor in 2023 remains at 0.8617 and the retirement age for 2024 at 66 years and four months,” concludes an official source.
That is, the early retirement penalty, for 2023, remains at 13.8%, a relief of 0.24 percentage points compared to the 14.06% cut applied in 2022, and the legal age for access to pensions, in 2024, will not change either, counting at 66 years and four months, a level that will be in effect this year.
The sustainability factor in 2021 reduced the value of early renovations by 15.5%. In 2022, this value has fallen to 14.06%, a decrease of 1.44 percentage points. It was the first retreat since the sustainability factor was created in 2008.
Still, the sustainability factor is far from the values of 2013, when it was 4.78%.
From that year and by imposition of the troikathe calculation formula changed, and the average life expectancy in 2000 was used as a reference and not in 2006, as it had been until then, with a sharp increase to 12.34% recorded in the following year.
In addition to this reduction, account must be taken of the pension reduction of 0.5% for each month of early retirement relative to the legal age.
Average life expectancy is rising
According to updated data from the INE mortality tables released yesterday, the average life expectancy at age 65 has increased compared to the initial estimate. “The difference between the provisional value of life expectancy at age 65 for 2020-2022, released in November 2022, of 19.30 years, and the now revised value of 19.61, corresponds to 0.31 years, or 3.66 months,” says the IN.
This indicator has an impact on the sustainability factor, which is calculated by dividing the average life expectancy at age 65 in 2000 (16.63%) by the now calculated value (19.61), subtracting 1 and then multiplying by 100, resulting in 15.2%.
Women aged 65 still have a higher average life expectancy than men. At that age, Portuguese men could live another 17.76 years and women another 20.98 years, which equates to a slight decrease of 3.65 days for men, with no change in life hopes at age 65 for women, for 2019-2021.
“Over the past decade, life expectancy at age 65 has increased by 9.7 months for men and 8.5 months for women,” the same report said.
Which escapes the cut because of the durability factor
However, there are situations where the sustainability factor does not apply. Early retirement is saved by the scheme for very long contributory careers, ie for persons aged 60 or over with a career of at least 48 years; or, 60 years or older and at least 46 years of contributing career, started with contributions to Social Security or Caixa Geral de Aposentação (CGA) before the age of 17. In addition, the sentence reduction does not apply to everyone who is at least 60 years old and 40 years old or more discount.
This penalty also does not apply if a disability pension is converted into a retirement pension. That is, when someone who has retired due to disability reaches the normal age for access to the current pension.
According to Legislative Decree 70/2020 of September 16, employees in professions that are considered to be subject to rapid wear and tear can also apply for early retirement without penalty.
Salomé Pinto is a journalist at Dinheiro VIvo
Source: DN
