President Piñera announces a set of proposals for a new social agenda

On Tuesday President Sebastián Piñera presented a robust Social Agenda to establish urgent benefits for the poorest sectors of the population, the middle class, senior citizens and the most neglected parts of Chile’s population.

 The principle announcements are:

Pensions

1. An immediate 20% increase in the Basic Solidarity Pension, which will benefit 590,000 pensioners.

2. An immediate 20% increase – as soon as the law is passed - in the Solidarity Pension Contribution, which will benefit 945,000 pensioners.

3. An additional increase in basic pensions and contributions to solidarity pensions, in 2021 and 2022, for pensioners aged 75 years and older.

4. A fiscal contribution to complement the pension savings of middle class people and women who work and pay into the social security system, to increase their pensions when they retire, which will favor 500,000 workers.

5. A fiscal contribution to improve the pensions of disabled senior citizens.

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Healthcare and Medications

1. The draft bill sent by our government to Congress to create the Catastrophic Illness Insurance needs to be discussed urgently. This will set a ceiling on family healthcare costs, ensuring that any costs that exceed this ceiling will be covered by the insurance.

2. Creation of an insurance that covers part of the medication costs of Chilean families where these are not covered by programs such as the Explicit Health Guarantees (GES) scheme or the Ricarte Soto Law.

3. Extension of the National Health Fund (Fonasa) agreement with pharmacies to reduce the price of medications, which will benefit more than 12 million Chileans.

Guaranteed Minimum Income

 Create a Guaranteed Minimum Monthly Income of $350,000 Chilean pesos (US$481) for all fulltime workers to complement their salary when their income is below $350,000 Chilean pesos. This benefit will be applied proportionally to workers under the age of 18 and over 65 years old.

Electricity Tariffs

Create a mechanism to stabilize electricity tariffs, which will cancel the recent 9.2% increase in electricity rates, returning the price of electricity to the level of the first half of this year.

Higher taxes for high-income sectors: Create a new 40% global complementary tax bracket for all monthly income greater than $8 million Chilean pesos (US$11,000), which will increase tax revenues by US$160 million.

Create an Ombudsman Office for Victims of Crime in order to strengthen and facilitate their access to legal defense and social and psychological support.

Greater equality between high- and low-income municipalities. Strengthen the Municipal Common Fund by establishing larger contributions from higher-income communities in benefit of lower-income municipalities. This will allow greater equality in the provision of municipal services such as security, lighting, infrastructure, parks, sports, recreation, and others.

Congress and Public Administration

Reduction in the salaries and allowances of members of Congress and the highest-paid public servants and a reduction in the number of members of Congress and a limitation to their reelection.

Several draft bills with high social content have been presented by our government to Congress that require urgent attention and approval. For this reason, I ask Congress to speed up the processing and approval of:

1. The Pro-Childhood Bill that will end with the infamous National Service for Minors (Sename) and replace it with two new public services: the Child and Youth Protection Service and the Youth Reintegration Service.

2. Bill that creates the Catastrophic Illness Insurance.

3. Bill that creates the right to Universal Daycare for the children of Chile’s working mothers or fathers.

4. Bill that establishes the reduction in property taxes for the poorest senior citizens.

A Reconstruction Plan for the damage and destruction caused by the violence and crime that have occurred over the last few days. They have caused serious damage to the public infrastructure, especially the Metro system other public facilities. This Reconstruction Plan will take time and will mobilize resources of more than US$350 million.