The problem is that this means that 89% of those in private funds – 6 million contributors – would only go to Colpensiones. The first consequence is that the funds practically disappear as an actor in the country’s capital market. Today the funds invest in projects, in shares, even in TES -state debt-. Today the stock is 405 billion where 283 billion are returns.
The other problem is that we created a monster. Colpensiones becomes an entity that must serve 10.6 million contributing Colombians. He does not have the capacity or the suitability. On the one hand, the administration cost of Colpensiones is 1.1% of the contribution, while the average cost of private funds is 0.6%. The cost of administration per contributor in Colpensiones is 387 thousand pesos while the private ones are 172 thousand pesos. We have also denounced how Colpensiones has been squandering resources: contracts with super costs, parallel payrolls with low technical capacity.
It is worth noting that the senior citizen subsidy has nothing to do with the pension. They mix it up and mention it to gain favorability among citizens.
If the Government wanted to pay the subsidy to the elderly, it could do so immediately. The truth is that in the almost two years of government, Petro has not increased the number of beneficiaries. President Uribe left 900 thousand, Duque 1.7 million and Petro has barely supported them. It was the Democratic Center that presented and approved the law to bring the subsidy to the poverty line. Petro has only repeated the speech.
This reform is a sophisticated mechanism to refinance the government and increases the debt of new generations.
In the next column I will expand on other consequences of the pension reform.