'PSD increase of 820€ not for minimum pension, only for 170k CIP recipients.'

Montenegro spoke of a "guaranteed minimum income for Portuguese pensioners" of 820 euros, which implied an increase in the minimum pension for nearly two million Portuguese. However, the talk was only about increasing the additional pension for the elderly - and only until 2028. Nevertheless, Miranda Sarmento argues that it was about increasing the guaranteed minimum income for pensioners. And explains why, when Luis Montenegro announced the proposal to raise pensions, many economists started counting. Where will so much money come from?

But the proposal to raise pensions to €820 a month does not ultimately apply to all pensioners - only to recipients of the Supplementary Pension for the Elderly (CSI).''Therefore about 170,000 people. Not nearly two million, as initial interpretations suggested. The origin of the misunderstanding lies in Luiz Montenegro's statement in his closing address to the 41st PDS congress on Saturday night.

The PDS chairman spoke of raising the "guaranteed minimum income for Portuguese pensioners" to 820 euros by the end of the next convocation. "We are not going to cut any pensions. We will increase pensions according to the law in general terms, but we will also gradually and by the end of the convocation bring the Pension for the Elderly to the level of 820 euros. This means the following: until 2028, the guaranteed minimum income for Portuguese pensioners will be 820 euros. "

This announcement has led to many''assumed - and that so wrote the news - that the PDS wants to raise the minimum pension to 820 euros. But the minimum pension in Portugal in 2023 is €291.48 a month. And since at the end of 2022, almost 1.7 million pensioners were receiving a pension lower than the national minimum wage (which will be higher in 2024, given subsequent minimum wage increases), raising the minimum pension to €820 would affect almost two million pensioners and cost the state around a billion euros.

Of course, however, nothing of the sort will happen.

The PDS now keeps all its proposals for submission to the election campaign, but the data indicated by Miranda Sarmento allows us to conclude that the proposal would cost several tens (or a small number of hundreds) of millions of euros - by 2028. Now, "about 170 thousand people" will receive 550 euros monthly in 2024, costing the budget, roughly, "about 300 million euros". Hence, the impact of the PDS measure "can be taken into account", he says, and "does not jeopardize the balance of the budget". Note that the average pension in''Portugal's pension is currently around €565. The increase to the 820 euro target will only happen in 2028, when average pensions will necessarily be higher (due to legal increases). Nevertheless, there will probably be many pensioners without access to the Supplementary Pension for the Elderly receiving less than €820 this year. The PDS is yet to explain the details of its proposal, but it is assumed that those receiving less than €820 will be able to access the Older People's Supplementary Pension this year. It is therefore likely that the number of CSI participants will increase with the PDS proposal. It should not be forgotten that access to CSI does not depend only on the size of the pension, as there is a resource condition, Sarmento points out: CSI recipients cannot have other income (e.g. rent''real estate or interest on deposits or have a spouse receiving a high enough pension), which would place them above the legal thresholds. "Observed '\''general'\''\''influence [of the PDS proposal] only in the last year of convocation," emphasizes Sarmento. Who defends the expression used by his party's leader: "The concept of a guaranteed minimum income for pensioners is that people can have more than one pension or other income other than a pension [because] CSI is a condition of resources".