The revaluation of pensions in 2023 has meant an average increase of 112.52 euros per month for Aragonese pensioners and 116.52 for Zaragoza pensioners. This was pointed out by the subdelegate of the Government in the province, Fernando Beltrán, who stressed that this increase “means maintaining the purchasing power of retired people and giving them certainty in the face of inflation”.
The average retirement pension in Aragón now stands at 1,436.34 euros per month (1,487.34 in Zaragoza) in 14 payments per year, which means an annual increase of more than 1,500 euros, the equivalent of more than one extra month.
The average revaluation of the retirement pension in Aragon since 2018 is 275 euros per month, a figure that contrasts with 14 euros per month for the same period of having maintained the revaluation index of the 2013 reform, of barely 0.25%. “The updating of the pensions according to the prices carried out by this Government makes an average pension now 23% higher than in 2018,” Beltrán stressed. The people of Zaragoza and Zaragoza have increased their pension by 282 euros.
In Aragon, on January 1, 2023, there are 203,059 retired people. Retirees make up the bulk of pensioners in the community, totalling 308,506. These include persons receiving benefits for widowhood (73,512), permanent disability (21,643) or orphanhood (9,439), who have also benefited from an 8.5 per cent increase in contributory pensions and a 15 per cent increase in non-contributory pensions.
The letter announcing the revaluation of each pensioner will arrive during these days. The January pension payroll is paid on February 1, although most banks advance it and will start charging as of today.
Guarantee rights and protect the most vulnerable
The subdelegate of the Government in Zaragoza, Fernando Beltrán, described the revaluation of pensions as “a social advance” and stressed that “it has been launched with the maximum social and political legitimacy, following the recommendations of the Toledo Pact of the Congress of Deputies and the great agreement with the social partners of 2021, which was signed in the Palacio de la Moncloa”.
“This Government understands that revaluation, the guarantee of purchasing power, is an intrinsic part of the right to a public pension, whether retirement, widowhood, disability, orphanhood or any of the types,” said Beltrán. And he added that to date it was an issue that depended on the political situation, but that today “this type of economic revisions give security to current pensioners and those who will soon be.”
The deputy delegate also highlighted the complementarity of other social justice measures implemented during this legislature, such as the gender gap supplement to correct pension differences between men and women, or the IMV, which has a special impact on the reduction of child poverty.
Beltrán has defended that “the maintenance of the purchasing power of pensions is compatible with the strengthening of the accounts of the Public Pension System, because the measures of protection and improvement of the quality of employment promoted among other norms by the labor reform are improving the income of the system and moving towards the budgetary balance, and because more measures have been taken, such as the assumption by the Budget of the expenses that do not have to be financed by the Social Security”.
“At times like these, with high inflation and great international uncertainty, it is when it makes the most sense for pensioners, who do not have the capacity to react in these situations, to be guaranteed their purchasing power,” concluded Beltrán.