As of: March 5, 2024, 9:48 a.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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The pension increase this year should finally be above the inflation rate - at least that is what Labor Minister Heil is assuming.
He clearly rejected a zero round.
Berlin – In March the time has finally come: Then it will be announced what pension increase retirees can expect this year.
The first good news: According to Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), this year's pension increase will be above the inflation rate.
Heil: “Pension increases are finally above the inflation rate again”
“The pension increases follow the tariff increases in the labor market,” said Heil on Sunday evening on ARD.
“And because they were quite decent, I expect that we will finally have pension increases above the inflation rate again because inflation is declining.”
The pension increase this year should finally be above the inflation rate - at least that is what Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) is assuming.
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
In January 2024 the inflation rate was 2.9 percent and in February it was expected to be 2.5 percent.
In 2023, pensions rose by 4.39 percent in the west and 5.86 percent in the east.
An initial forecast from last year predicts a pension increase of around 3.5 percent for 2024 - but some experts assume more because of the wage increases resulting from collective bargaining agreements last year.
Scholz is positioning himself against zero benefits for pensioners
However, a zero round for pensioners is rather unlikely: this has been rejected by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).
Pension expert Bernd Raffelhüschen had previously made a corresponding suggestion in the
Bild
newspaper.
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in Berlin that the Chancellor had viewed this proposal “as evidence of the extent to which the world of a professor cannot be reconciled with the realities of life of 20 million pensioners.”
Heil, who is responsible for pensions, made a similar statement.
“The pension increase will come on July 1st; pensioners in Germany are entitled to it,” explained the Labor Minister.
“The fact that so-called experts chronically question social security does not contribute to social cohesion and of course does not guide the federal government’s actions,” the minister made clear.
Raffelhüschen had called for the pension increase to be suspended this year
in
Bild .
He justified this with the tense budget situation.
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Heil wants to present a pension package on Tuesday
The pension system is also under pressure due to demographic change.
That's why Heil wants to push forward the planned pension package, which is to be presented on Tuesday.
In the pension package, the pension level should also be set at 48 percent for the period after 2025 to 2029, and the so-called stock pension should also stabilize the system financially through returns from the capital market.
With material from AFP and dpa