Economist calls for increasing pensioners’ salaries and stresses: The retirement law does not suit t

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[size=52]Economist calls for increasing pensioners’ salaries and stresses: The retirement law does not suit the current stage[/size]

[size=45]Economic researcher Basem Antoine confirmed that the unified retirement law does not suit the current stage in the country, while calling for increasing retirees’ salaries to be in line with the standard of living.[/size]
[size=45]Antoine said, “The minimum salary for a retiree has become 500,000 Iraqi dinars, and this number is very small with the rise in the standard of living, as well as monetary inflation and the rise in food prices, in addition to the citizen’s needs for clothing, electricity and water costs, and rent allowance.” He stressed that “this salary is one of the foundations on which it was built many years ago and does not suit the current stage, as it is necessary to reconsider and evaluate retirees’ salaries in light of the rise in prices and the statistics available in the Ministry of Planning and the Central Organization for Standardization.”[/size]
[size=45]Antoine added, "The government must increase retirees' salaries by at least 10 to 20 percent, especially minimum wages."[/size]
[size=45]He continued, "A permanent formula must be put in place, and this is done by evaluating retirees' salaries with prices to meet their needs in order to achieve sufficiency." He indicated that "there are several issues that affect the standard of living of retirees, including the health aspect such as medical check-ups and others that constitute a burden on the income of the retired citizen because the latter cannot practice another job, especially those who are over 60 years old." He warned that "the compatibility of the foundations on which the retirement law was built must be measured."[/size]
[size=45]Last March, the House of Representatives moved to amend the retirement law and return the service age to 63 years instead of 60 years. Representatives commented on the amendment to the unified retirement law, saying that this move came about due to certain circumstances and reasons, the most prominent of which was creating a new opportunity, especially for the youth segment, and benefiting from these energies within the various state institutions, while they confirmed that there is no need for it now.[/size]
[size=45]While Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani stressed in a statement that “the citizen evaluates the performance of the state and its institutions, according to the amount of services provided to him, especially those who spent many years in the job and paid retirement deductions, which requires improving the services provided to retirees and alleviating their suffering, as well as finding ways to sustain the fund’s money.”[/size]
[size=45]Al-Sudani directed “the Board of Directors of the Retirement Fund to seek the assistance of experts and consultants specialized in the field of investment development, and to prepare a strategic plan that works to diversify the Fund’s investment basket, and to identify the available investment opportunities and transform them into profitable projects, in a way that ensures increasing the Fund’s income, and to benefit from the experiences of advanced countries in this regard, as well as to provide the Fund with a group of specialized employees.”[/size]
[size=45]Al-Sudani also directed, “to prepare an executive action plan to automate all services provided to retirees and beneficiaries according to a timetable, and to create an application (the Unified Retirement Platform), and sub-platforms for all state departments; with the aim of overcoming routine and bureaucracy, facilitating the completion of administrative and financial procedures related to the collection of retirement deductions and referral to retirement, completing the internal system of the fund and implementing the instructions of the Retirement Law.”[/size]
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