{"id":84677,"date":"2017-01-11T06:24:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T11:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=84677"},"modified":"2017-01-11T06:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T11:24:47","slug":"sss-urged-to-address-inefficiencies-amid-pension-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/01\/11\/sss-urged-to-address-inefficiencies-amid-pension-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"SSS urged to address inefficiencies amid pension hike"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"SSS<\/a>
SSS urged to address inefficiencies amid pension hike (Photo: Social Security System\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u2014Amid controversies hounding the PHP1,000 hike in the monthly pension of all pensioners under the Social Security System (SSS), a senator on Wednesday urged the state-run pension fund to address operational inefficiencies particularly increasing the contribution of SSS members.<\/p>\n

Senator Sherwin \u201cWin\u201d Gatchalian said the 24.3 percent expenses-to-income ratio of SSS was far larger than that of comparable social insurance institutions within Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).<\/p>\n

This includes the local Government Service Insurance System (10.1 percent), Malaysia’s Employees’ Provident Fund (3.21 percent), and Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (2.51 percent).<\/p>\n

Gatchalian further said that SSS is not meeting the high standard of financial management and operational efficiency set by similar institutions within the region.<\/p>\n

“It even earns less than half of the annual income of GSIS despite spending more money. Simply put, SSS is being left behind by its peers,” said Gatchalian.<\/p>\n

He stressed that the SSS management also failed to provide the kind of results its pensioners deserve and threatened to look for more capable leaders to replace them.<\/p>\n

The neophyte senator estimated that SSS could generate an additional PHP6 to 9 billion per year in savings and revenue by reducing operating expenses and minimizing collection leakages.<\/p>\n

He meanwhile urged SSS to correct its over-exposure to short and medium-term member loans, which according to the 2015 COA Audit Report amounted to 15.3 percent of its reserves, well above the 10 percent cap imposed by the SSS Law.<\/p>\n

In the same audit report, COA assessed the value of delinquent member loans to be PHP41.9 billion, PHP22.4 billion of which had been delinquent for five or more years.<\/p>\n

Gatchalian, who had earlier filed a Senate bill seeking to implement an across-the-board increase in SSS pensions by PHP2000 per month, however, commended President Pres. Rodrigo Duterte for approving the increase despite previously indicating that he would not support it.<\/p>\n

“While I commend President Duterte for coming to a compromise on this issue, it is also critical that we do not let the management of SSS take the easy way out by simply increasing contribution levels,” Gatchalian said.<\/p>\n

“The SSS needs to put its house in order to make sure that it does not waste contributors’ money,” he added.<\/p>\n

The release of the pension would come in two tranches — the initial PHP1,000 increase this month will be the first tranche while the additional PHP1,000 in 2022 or earlier will be the second tranche.<\/p>\n

Pres. Duterte approved a pension hike for SSS members along with a corresponding increase in contributions on Tuesday (January 10).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  MANILA\u2014Amid controversies hounding the PHP1,000 hike in the monthly pension of all pensioners under the Social Security System (SSS), …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":84678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,16,95],"tags":[12173,2444,13415,2194],"class_list":["post-84677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-association-of-southeast-asian-nations","tag-rodrigo-duterte","tag-sherwin-win-gatchalian","tag-social-security-system","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}