The new pension indexation mechanism announced by the Government will bring an unwanted side effect:
the increase in disability pensions
. Disability pensions are those granted by the State to socially vulnerable people who demonstrate a 76% or more decrease in their work capabilities.
According to official figures,
almost 2.6% of the Argentine population is disabled
: 1,208,487 people receive disability pensions.
There is no war or natural disaster that explains it
. Nor can it explain the increases in the number of beneficiaries: between 2002 and 2017, benefits went from 76,899 to 1,075,815, with an increase of 1,299% as published in Fund.ar.
Between mid-2021 and the end of 2023 the figures make a new jump of 12%. The amount of benefits is 70% of the minimum salary (in April it will be about $120,000), which represents a monthly expense of $1,450,000 million; that is,
the equivalent of almost 600,000 minimum pensions.
25% of the beneficiaries are concentrated in the province of Buenos Aires. 1.56% of the Buenos Aires population is disabled - or at least earns as such. Another province, Santiago del Estero, is even worse: there 8% are disabled and in its neighbors Formosa and Chaco, 7%.
Argentina is five times as high as Chile in the percentage of disabled people, more than double Uruguay and double Brazil.
In the middle of the electoral campaign, Javier Milei had already assured that these pensions
were going to be reviewed.
He was more prudent than Mauricio Macri, who in mid-2017 spoke of suspending payments, which
immediately unleashed a wave of judicial protections and rejection from the entire political arc.
Finally, nothing happened.
The Ministry of Human Capital headed by Sandra Pettovello is in charge of pensions, and according to
Clarín
, it has been spending 12% more than expected. Among all the programs that Pettovello administers (ANSES included), 7.4 billion of the 19.5 billion planned for the entire year were spent. It is equivalent to 37% of the total when the projection should have been 25% in the quarter. In the case of unemployment insurance, something similar happens: $34,381 million of the $47,092 provided in the budget were paid; 73% in just three months.
At this rate the program ends in May.