Yesterday, on Senior Citizens’ Day, the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy announced that in the years 2019-2023, i.e. the second term of the Government of Law and Justice, another PLN 196 billion was allocated to pensioners and retirees.
This concerns annual funds for the indexation of pensions and annuities during this period, but also additional funds for the provision of the 13th pension, and later also the 14th pension, introduced by the Government of Law and Justice.
To this astronomical amount transferred from the state budget to the community of pensioners, we must add at least PLN 10 billion annually, spent from the budget in connection with lowering the retirement age, funds related to the introduction of a PIT tax-free amount of PLN 30,000 (making pensions reach 2.5 thousand PLN are free of PIT) and a reduction in the tax rate of 17%. up to 12%, as well as funds for free medicines for seniors aged 75 and over, and this year also for those over 65.
On this occasion, we would like to remind you that the 13th pension at the level of the lowest benefit was paid out for the first time in 2019 (from 2020 it has already been a regular supplementary benefit regulated by law), while the 14th pension was also paid out in 2021 . paid (this 2023 benefit is in turn a service regulated by law).
The fruits of economic growth
This way of providing pensioners with extra money, as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has repeatedly justified, is a way to share with this community the fruits of economic growth, which is exceptionally high compared to other EU countries.
In this way, the 13th and 14th pensions have become a permanent part of the Polish pension system, extremely important additional benefits, especially for retirees with low pensions (i.e. for the majority of Polish retirees).
There was also high indexation of pension benefits in 2021 with an index of 4.16%. (inflation for 2020 plus 20% of the real increase in the average salary in 2020), the lowest amount of the increase being PLN 50.
In total, the additional resources paid to pensioners and disabled pensioners in 2021 for indexation, as well as in the form of the 13th and 14th pensions, amounted to almost PLN 36 billion.
In 2022 that will be 7 percent again. the indexation of pensions and disability pensions required additional budgetary expenditure of over PLN 20 billion, and the payment of the 13th and 14th pensions required at least over PLN 12 billion and PLN 11 billion respectively (a total of around PLN 44 billion).
However, in 2023 the indexation percentage was set at 14.8%. (the average inflation rate announced by the Central Bureau of Statistics was 14.4% plus a 0.4 percentage point share of wage increase), and the lowest guaranteed benefit increase was set at PLN 250.
In this situation, almost PLN 45 billion was allocated for the indexation of pensions and another PLN 30 billion for the 13th and 14th pensions, totaling as much as PLN 75 million in additional expenditure for the retirement community.
On this occasion, let us not forget that the funds allocated for pension increases in 2015 (in the last year of the PO-PSL government) amounted to only PLN 3.6 billion (and in previous years they were even lower), and that the 13th and 14th pensions during the PO government -PSL, pensioners could only dream about it.
Multiple increases in retiree benefits
During the years of law and justice, and especially in the years 2021-2023, the additional resources for pensioners were respectively ten times, fourteen times and more than twenty times higher than the amounts paid to pensioners in 2015, and all indications are insists that when the Platform returns to power, additional resources for pensioners will return to the level of only several billion zlotys per year.
In the draft budget for 2024, Law and Justice has indexed pensions by 12.3%. approximately PLN 43 billion, and for the 13th and 14th pensions another amount of PLN 35 billion (almost PLN 80 billion in total), but although the indexation of the planned amount should already be carried out on March 1 next year, the payment for on the 13th and 14th, this is no longer so certain, as the new parliamentary majority prepares to withdraw from these solutions.
Everything indicates that Polish pensioners could experience the negative effects of the government of the new parliamentary majority led by the Platform as early as 2024, which has never had a ‘heart’ for the pensioner community.
Source: wPolityce