Portuguese Civil Service: number of retired employees decreases for the first time since 1969
Civil Service average pension decreased to less than one thousand euros in 2016, says the Public Finance Council in their assessment of budgetary execution in the Civil Service Pension Fund.
The total number of pensioners from the Civil Service Pension Fund (CGA — Caixa Geral de Aposentações) has dropped last year for the first time since 1969. The new amount of pensioners is also the lowest since 1993, says the Public Finance Council (CFP — Conselho das Finanças Públicas) in their analysis of CGA and Social Security’s budget execution in 2016.
Last year, CGA‘s expenses increased only 0.1%, a slowdown in comparison to 2015. In the specific case of pensions, expenses decreased 0.1% after having increased 1.8% in the previous year, contrasting with the 0.3% projection. This happened because of the decrease in the amount of new pensioners — 8,727 new pensions, excluding survivors’ pensions –, the decrease in the overall number of pensioners (3.655 less than in the end of 2015), as well as the average amount of new pensions.
“This decrease is resultant from: the decrease in the overall amount of pensioners, which had not happened since 1969; the lowest amount of new pensioners since 1993; the decrease of the average amount of new retirement pensions for the third year in a row”, the document states.
Even so, the imbalance between the number of pensioners and the number of workers has worsened: in 2015, for the first time, the number of pensioners surpassed the workforce, says the Finance Council, headed by Teodora Cardoso. The difference went from 12,823 in the end of 2015 to 18.753 in 2016, because the subscribers decrease rhythm was steeper than the overall amount of pensioners.
As for the average pensions value, it is now below one thousand euros: “in 2013, it was 1,302 euros; it decreased to 1,246 in 2014 and to 1,112 euros in 2015 and to 936 euros in 2016“, says the Public Finance Council.
