113.44 euros is what revalues the average pension in Melilla from this month, thanks to the 8.5% increase approved by the Government of Pedro Sánchez.
The Delegate of the Government, Sabrina Moh, has welcomed this increase that guarantees the purchasing power of pensioners and that will benefit 8,467 melillenses.
“With this increase, the average retirement pension in our city is 113.44 euros per month or 1,588 euros per year,” said Moh, who indicated that the average pension in Melilla is 1,448 euros per month.
In the words of the Delegate, with this increase the Executive of President Sánchez recovers a right, such as the maintenance of the purchasing power of our elders, which had been lost with the PP Government.
“The pension system is one of the main assets of our Welfare State and, therefore, we have worked and continue to work, intensively to strengthen and modernize it,” he said.
Sabrina Moh has highlighted the opposition that the people have maintained from the first moment to the increase of pensions according to inflation. These pressures have not been effective because “this Government understands that revaluation, the guarantee of purchasing power, is an intrinsic part of the right to a public pension”.
“Despite the pressure of the PP, the revaluation of pensions is an unwavering commitment of the Government, it is the expression of the solidarity of society with those who have contributed and deserve protection commensurate with their efforts,” he said.
But, in addition, the Delegate wanted to clarify that this increase is fully compatible with the strengthening of the accounts of the Public Pension System, because the measures to protect and improve the quality of employment, promoted among other rules by the labor reform, are improving the income of the system and moving towards budgetary balance.
“The cost of revaluation to 8.5% in the country as a whole is 13.6 billion euros. If you add the 15% increase in non-contributory pensions and the Minimum Vital Income, this figure amounts to 14.5 billion,” said Moh. However, in the year 2023, a record income is expected for social contributions, which will amount to 10.9% of the total GDP, with more than 152 billion euros.
Certainty for our elders
Moh recalled that, with the PP system, with which pensions rose by 0.25% indistinctly from the increase in the cost of living, our seniors were impoverished year after year, but, in addition, they lived with the uncertainty, every year of knowing how much purchasing power they were going to lose.
In this sense, he pointed out that, if the popular system had been applied, the average revaluation of pensions in the city would have been 3 euros per month instead of 113 euros per month. The Delegate has gone even further, given that she has calculated at 297.52 euros per month the amount that has been revalued the average pension in our city between 2018 and 2023 with the Government of Pedro Sánchez. “If the PP system had been applied, in these 5 years, the average pension in Melilla would have increased by 14.45 euros per month,” he said.
With the linking of the IPC to pensions, the government of Pedro Sánchez has ended the uncertainty that the popular had created in pensioners, he said. “We have taken a decisive step to ensure that the purchasing power of pensioners is permanently guaranteed”, he said, and that is that the formula established by this Government “gives certainty to pensioners, who do not have the capacity to react to a change of context, and generates confidence in future pensioners, to whom it is transmitted that the pension system is financially and socially sustainable”.
Not only that, “in difficult times like this, with high inflation and great international uncertainty, 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”, argued the Delegate.
At this point, Moh has stressed that the revaluation of pensions is not an economic measure, but a right included in the Spanish Constitution. “It’s an issue that can’t be decided according to the situation, the rights don’t work like that, no matter how much it is to the right of this country,” he said.
“For the vast majority of society, maintaining the purchasing power of our pensioners is fundamental because it is about justice and even more so in a context of high inflation unknown for thirty years as the one we are experiencing,” he concluded.