Colombia presidential candidates agree need for pension reform

By Nelson Bocanegra

CARTAGENA (Reuters) – Candidates presumably to assign Colombia’s presidential elections on Friday agreed for the necessity to reform the nation’s unbalanced pension contrivance so that it affords better coverage for thousands and thousands of wretched folk and redirects subsidies.

Suggestions for financing the reform ranged from a pudgy tax reform to extra radical plans similar to the snort of financial savings from deepest funds to pay the pensions of older adults who respect now not managed to place ample for his or her retirement, among others.

Colombia’s public pensions are beset by the necessity to develop coverage while contending with a shortfall of additional than $11.3 billion bucks a three hundred and sixty five days which the executive must cough up to build up particular payments to the 2.4 million folk affiliated with the contrivance.

Left-flit candidate Gustavo Petro, who leads election polls has proposed the snort of pension financial savings from deepest funds to serve finance pensions in the overall public contrivance and pay bonuses to a few 3 million those that enact now not respect ample for retirement.

Non-public pension funds organize sources price spherical $92 billion bucks, equal to nearly 30% of the nation’s annual bad home product (GDP).

In step with Petro’s manifesto, the supreme to a pension “will seemingly be a collective impart enlighten according to social team spirit and now not on the deepest appropriation of advantages to the detriment of the financial savings of all Colombians.”

The proposal has raised fears among economists.

2nd-favourite Federico Gutierrez, the center-appropriate candidate, proposed declaring the mixed public and deepest contrivance while taking away subsidies price $5.3 billion bucks for high-cost financial savings funds and redirecting them to those that enact now not respect pensions.

“There are mountainous reforms that are completely important,” Gutierrez acknowledged all over the annual congress of the pension fund affiliation Asofondos in the Caribbean city of Cartagena.

“The mountainous reforms prefer to happen in the important three hundred and sixty five days,” he added.

Centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo proposed supporting the three.6 million adults light over 65 without a pension or income with payments price some $133 a month.

The view would need some $4.79 billion to finance and Fajardo, who is fourth in the polls, would fund the trip by pushing a tax reform price $8.78 billion thru Congress, he acknowledged.

“Of us can’t assign anymore,” Fajardo acknowledged, recognizing voters’ unhappiness with the pension contrivance.