The president of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (BCRP), Julio Velarde, said that allowing a seventh withdrawal from the AFP pension funds would be “crazy.” He warned that with these authorizations, which are promoted from the Congress of the republic, the pension system is being destroyed. In a technical opinion that the legislature requested on the subject, he noted that the current circumstances do not justify the approval of new withdrawals.
“It occurs to no one that they could be withdrawing money from pension funds. The population cannot be left without pensions. There is no country that does not have a pension system. Taking all the money out is crazy, here or anywhere in the world. If you say to the worker: ‘Do you want to have the money in your hand or do you want it to go to a pension fund?’, he will answer: ‘I prefer to have the money in my hand, I prefer to spend it now’ (…)”. Really it is crazy to disappear the pension system,” Velarde commented after the press conference he gave on the inflation report of March 2023.
The head of the BCRP also mentioned that the six previous withdrawals already have some effects, since the capital market is disappearing, although he stressed that the most important is that we are the only country that is returning to the 19th century, by allowing so many withdrawals that they can leave hundreds of people without a pension in the future. “It is true that there is not enough coverage, among other problems, but not having a pension system is like going back to the 18th, 19th century,” she considered.
It should be noted that the Congressional Economic Commission asked the BCRP for its technical opinion regarding a seventh withdrawal of up to S/19,800 (4 UIT) and it specified that the current circumstances do not justify approving new extraordinary withdrawals from pension fundsin addition to the fact that multilateral organizations state that, if measures for early access to this money are adopted, they should only be implemented in extraordinary situations.
To date, there have been six legislative proposals to give access to pension fundspresented by parliamentarians Luis Kamiche (Democratic Peru), Segundo Montalvo (Libre Peru), Víctor Cutipa (Bicentennial Peru), Digna Calle (Podemos Peru), Américo Gonza (Libre Peru) and Víctor Flores (Popular Force).
Source: Larepublica
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