He says enough that the Government’s calculations on pensions are “lies” and wants to hear from the minister

President Chegi on Monday dismissed the government’s calculations about the impact of the pension hike as “a lie” and announced that the party would demand that the Minister of Labor and Social Security be heard in parliament.

“This pension increase that the government has announced is a ploy and is a scam, it is just an expectation of what should happen next year and what will not happen again,” the leader said in a video sent to reporters, noting that it was about “ anticipating what was promised and abandoning what was guaranteed next year.”

Referring to an assessment of the impact of the increase in pensions on the financial sustainability of social security, prepared by the Department of Strategy and Planning (GEP) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and sent to Parliament, Andre Ventura believes that this document “shows that the government is capable, using technicians, auditors, lawyers , manipulate numbers and present data that does not correspond to reality.

“What is presented to the parties is a lie,” he defended without going into detail.

In a video released this Monday, President Chega announced that his parliamentary group wants to “urgently summon the Minister of Labor and Social Security to Parliament, as well as the technicians who prepared this report, which is presented to the parties.”

“We will call to parliament all the organizations involved in this report, as well as the minister, to politically answer for these lies that the government wants to impose on the Portuguese,” he added.

And he argued that “experts, commentators, parties, advisers have all consistently calculated and all come to the same conclusion: the government is lying about the raises that pensioners will receive, the sustainability of social security is not at stake and the government is using money from general government budget, and not from the social security budget, to make this extraordinary increase promised for October.”

“All this needs to be found out, and it needs to be found out whether the government manipulated these data or not,” the leader of the far-right party justified.

A document circulated to parties with parliamentary representation indicates that the renewal of pensions in line with automatic renewal and subsequent increases of 7.1-8% from 2023 will lead to the first negative balances of the social security system appearing by the end of the 2020s years.

Last Monday, the prime minister rejected any ploy in announcing pension increases between this year and next and said the government wants to avoid a permanent €2 billion increase in spending.

António Costa stressed that since 2015 the government has managed to increase the amount of the social security financial stabilization fund over 26 years, but warned that if pensions are increased next year in accordance with the current calculation formula, they will be lost13. of those 26 years, which again refers to a study introduced to Parliament.

“What we couldn’t do responsibly was create an absolutely extraordinary and atypical year of inflation like this one and turn it into a permanent effect,” António Costa told TVI/CNN Portugal.