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One in three Greeks receives a pension of over 1,000 euro

09 September 2013 / 16:09:14  GRReporter
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A year after the launch of the electronic system to monitor the pensions in Greece the Ministry of Employment has presented its results. According to the data, the average net income from pensions in Greece amounts to 921.15 euro, the majority of the basic pensions being within the range of 500 and 1,000 euro.

The number of pensioners is 2,076,924, the number of pensions is 4,455,847 and the total amount paid in the form of pensions in August this year exceeded 2.3 billion euro.

In his statements regarding the results of the inspections Minister of Employment Yiannis Vroutsis states that the system called "Helios" is linked with the other control system "Ariadne". "The insurance funds suspended the payment of 8,526 pensions after we obtained information about 9,304 cases of death."

The report shows that the number of female pensioners is higher than that of male and that it is 1,416,063 and 1,280,282 respectively. 58% of the total number of pensioners are over the age of 70 and 26% are aged between 61 and 69 years.

The pensioners aged between 61 and 65 years are receiving the highest pensions on average. The highest is the number of pensions paid in Attica (1,710,506) and in Central Macedonia (733,079) followed by the regions of Thessaly with 308,713 pensions and Western Greece with 260,900.

The number of the pensions paid by the insurance funds in September was 4,455,847 and 2,897,195 of them were basic and 1,553,159 auxiliary. The total amount was equal to that paid in August, namely 2.3 billion euro.

A large number of old-age pensioners (766,966) are receiving between 500 and 1,000 euro. The same is the number of pensioners whose monthly incomes are between 1,000 and 2,000 euro. About 29% of the basic pension exceeds the amount of 1,000 euro.

The statistical data on the number of pensions received by some of the pensioners is interesting too, as 1,408,318 Greeks are receiving one pension, 929,888 are receiving two and 303,702 three pensions. The official data have confirmed the information previously announced, namely that 258 people are receiving more than 7 pensions and that 1% of the total number of pensioners are under the age of 25.

At the same time, the Greek government will continue its policy of austerity in 2014 despite the social unrest. It is planning to cut various costs on the basis of a programme called "2013 - 2016 spending revision" which it started immediately after last year's elections. Under this programme, the larger part of the fiscal consolidation will be completed in the period 2013-2014 which means that the costs in several sectors are going to be cut next year apart from the measures implemented to date. The changes will affect the following sectors:

- The judiciary, as the retroactive payment of wages to judicial magistrates totalling 140 million euro will be delayed.

- College teachers, as they will be included in the mobility programme which will result in the reduction of wage costs by 13.8 million euro.

- Primary and secondary school teachers with annual contracts and thousands of others who will not be employed, since the total wage costs will be cut by 87.5 million euro.

The following proposals which were rejected in previous votes are pending:

- The salaries of employees in the parliament which exceed the threshold of the unified payroll table.

- The involvement of the employees of the National Counterintelligence Service in the unified payroll table.

- The revision of the salaries of priests who are receiving a second pension from the state and the cancellation of the option of them receiving a full salary.

- The cancellation of additional payments (travelling expenses) to municipal officials when they are carrying out their duties within the municipalities.

- The cancellation of all additional payments to the salaries of civil servants.

In addition, the lump-sum payment received by civil servants and employees of state-owned enterprises upon retirement will be further cut in order for the government to fill the gap of 1.9 million euro in the revenues of the insurance funds. This year the difference was taken over by the state budget.

Tags: SocietyPensionsInsurance fundsMonitoring systems
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