The government is still unable to estimate the value of the increase of the minimum pensions – Diário de Notícias – Lisbon

Values will be known only in December, but the rise may be lower than the 0.7%

The minister of Labour, Vieira da Silva, admitted today that it is not yet possible to estimate the increase of the lowest pensions in the next year, and although inflation presents a “growing trend”, the ascent may be less than 0.7%.

“we can’t Yet. This is not still the last value that let’s take into account. When we have all the data in our possession, we know which was the value used for the estimate of the costs, but is not yet finished the process of scouting,” explains the responsible minister, in parliament.

according To the data released on Thursday by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6% in September to 0.9% in October.

The indicator of underlying inflation (excluding unprocessed food and energy) registered an annual variation of 0.7%, higher by 0.2 percentage points to the rate observed in the previous month.

the monthly variation of The IPC, in turn, was 0.3% (0.7% in September and 0.1% in October 2015) and the average variation in the last twelve months remained at 0.6 percent.

according to the proposal of the State Budget for 2017 (OE2017), which has been debated in the specialty for nearly five hours, the Government provides that all pensions up to 838,44 euros are increased in line with inflation and that all pensions up to the 628,83 euros, provided that they have not been updated between 2011 and 2015, are the target of an update extraordinary to assign for each pensioner, in August.

Asked by journalists about whether this increase may reach 0.7% in 2017, the minister admitted that may be a little short, referring however to the values that will be known in December.

“We will analyze the situation to see if there is any change, the trend of the inflation is a growing trend, I don’t know if with an intensity sufficient to reach this value (by 0.7%), but we’ll wait for the final figures,” said Vieira da Silva.

The Government has argued that opted to apply this climb extraordinary only to the pensions that were frozen during the previous term, upgrading the level of inflation, the pension that had increases, albeit slight. On the whole, the update of the pensions will cost 200 million euros in 2017.

This afternoon, during the discussion in specialty of the proposal of OE2017, the opposition questioned Vieira da Silva about whether the Government is willing to accommodate in the Budget an increase of the minimum pensions above the value of inflation – about 50 million euros, according to the CDS -, but although it had been almost five hours of debate, there has not been any response on the part of members of the executive present.