International
Higher contributions and social security: the keys to Chile’s new pension reform
The Chilean Parliament gave the green light this Wednesday by a large majority to a pension reform promoted by the Government of Gabriel Boric that seeks to improve low pensions and proposes the most significant changes to the model created more than four decades ago by the dictatorship.
“It’s a tremendous achievement for Chile. It is an act of justice, of deep affection and respect for our people, which responds to what is one of the biggest debts that our country drags,” the president said in a public statement from the La Moneda palace.
Here are the keys to a reform that for some is “decaffeinated” and for others is an “achiemement” of a very polarized political class, which has not agreed for years on the great structural changes that Chile requires:
Established in 1981, in the middle of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the Chilean system was a pioneer in the region in installing individual capitalization and forcing each formal worker to contribute 10% of his monthly salary to a personal account that he can dispose of when he retires, managed by the controversial private pension administrators (AFP).
Its defenders argue that the model has contributed to the development of the national capital market, while its detractors consider that it is an abusive and unfair system and that it only works if you have a stable job and a high income, something unthinkable for the vast majority of Chileans.
“This system has not worked because of the way pensions are calculated. People who contributed between 35 and 40 years and retired in 2023 had a replacement rate of 32.6%, this is a third of their average 10-year salary,” María José Azócar, of the Sol Foundation, told EFE.
Pensions have been leading the polls on major citizen concerns for years and citizens had lost confidence in the ability of politics to improve them.
The refoundation of the system was also one of the main demands of the 2019 protests.
None of the reforms proposed by the Governments of Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera came to the surface and only partial achievements were obtained such as the creation of a public pension for the most vulnerable in 2008 and its expansion in 2022.
The reform, which has undergone substantial modifications since it was presented by the left-wing Administration in 2022, seeks to benefit 2.8 million retirees, with increases in their pensions of between 14% and 35%.
It also increases the universal basic pension to 250,000 ($253); gradually raises the contribution to 17%, at the expense of the employer; creates social insurance; incorporates intra- and intergenerational solidarity mechanisms and tightens industry regulation to make it more competitive.
“It is a reform that changes the face of what the dictatorship did to this country,” said the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Jeannette Jara, after the approval.
The economist of the University of Chile Guillermo Larraín explained to EFE that “the most advanced countries have mixed systems, but these are more dominated by the State, while in Chile the path has been the other way around, because it is moving from a very private system to a slightly more public one.”
It was negotiated with the traditional right-wing coalition Chile Vamos and, although it is far from what the Government aspired to, it is a breath of air for Boric, since it was one of his great campaign promises, along with the tax pact that he still does not manage to move forward.
The most radical part of the coalition that makes up the Government (Communist Party and Broad Front) voted in favor, despite believing that too many concessions were made during the parliamentary debate and that they gave up eliminating the AFPs and creating a system with greater state weight.
“This reform is valid and perfects the system of the AFPs. In the long term, 6 more points will go to individual capitalization, when in the original Government project those 6 points went to social insurance so that Chile could catch up on the international stage and not continue to be an extreme case,” said Azócar.
Skepticism also reigns in the street: according to the latest Data Influye survey, 64% of those over 55 believe that the reform will not “definitely” solve the problem of pensions, compared to 33% who believe that it will only solve it “in part” and 1% who are very satisfied.
The only ones who voted against were some of them from Chile Vamos and the deputies of the different far-right parties in Parliament, opposed to any distribution system.
The leader of the far-right Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, who lost to Boric in the 2021 elections, charged against the reform in X for “taking away from workers one of their most precious assets, the right to property over their savings” and warned that he will repeal it if he manages to come to power in the elections at the end of the year.
International
A magnitude 6 earthquake shakes the province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador, bordering Colombia
A magnitude 6 earthquake was recorded this Friday in the coastal province of Esmeraldas, bordering Colombia, causing damage to several infrastructures and leaving, so far, 20 people injured.
According to the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School, the earthquake occurred at 06:44 local time (11:44 GMT) at 1.03 degrees south latitude and 79.69 degrees west longitude.
According to the source, the tremor occurred at a depth of 30 kilometers and 9.31 kilometers from Esmeraldas, capital of the homonymous province.
According to the National Secretariat of Risk Management (SNGR), the affected people had head injuries and bruises.
While the SNGR continues with the verification of affectations, it indicated that 80% of the electricity service and 80% of the telecommunications that were affected, are gradually restored.
Among the affected public buildings are the ECU 911 due to a fall of masonry; the Vargas Torres University, which has cracks; the Los Militares building where the front collapsed and the Prefecture building, among others.
The SNGR reported that the earthquake was felt with strong intensity in seven municipalities of the province of Esmeraldas and moderately in the provinces of Guayas and Manabí, while mildly in Carchi, Cotopaxi, Imbabura, Los Ríos, Pichincha, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and Tungurahua.
About twenty minutes after the earthquake in Esmeraldas, one of magnitude 4.1 was reported in the coastal province of Guayas, located in the southeast of the country, without damage or victims having been reported so far.
The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ordered the displacement of all his ministers to Esmeraldas, in order to coordinate actions after the magnitude 6 earthquake recorded this Friday.
“I have arranged for the immediate deployment of all ministers in the province of Esmeraldas to coordinate the installation of shelters, delivery of humanitarian aid kits and assistance in everything our people need,” Noboa wrote on his social network account X.
The province of Esmeraldas was one of the most affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake recorded on April 16, 2016, which left more than 670 dead, thousands affected, as well as millions of material losses.
This earthquake also hit the province of Manabí, located, like Esmeraldas, on the coast of the Andean country, but also affected other areas and was felt strongly, even in the Ecuadorian capital.
Ecuador is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire or Belt, which concentrates some of the most important subduction areas (sinking of tectonic plates) in the world and is the scene of strong seismic activity.
In addition to Ecuador, the Horseshoe-shaped Belt comprises a large number of countries such as Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States and Canada.
International
Preparations for Pope Francis’ funeral, in figures
The funeral of Pope Francis this Saturday, the first of a reigning pontiff for two decades, is an event that moves dizzying figures and will require the full mobilization of Italian authorities and volunteers.
These are some of the figures that draw what can be expected tomorrow for a historic day:
The Italian Ministry of the Interior has calculated that 200,000 faithful will attend the funeral of Francis. For the next conclave – with a date yet to be defined – and the election of the new pope, that figure amounts to 250,000.
The funeral procession that will move the remains of the late pope from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor, where Francis arranged to be buried in a simple tomb.
3,000 volunteers will mobilize the Italian Civil Protection, responsible for the management of the preparations. There will be 55 health teams distributed throughout the funeral procession between San Pedro del Vaticano and the basilica de Santa María la Mayor, in addition to 11 advanced medical posts and 52 additional ambulances that will join the existing fleet.
17 degrees and a radiant sun are expected at 10:00 (08.00 GMT) on Saturday, the start time of the funeral, although the thermometer could reach 24 degrees throughout the day.
The state group Ferrovie dello Stato makes 260,000 seats available to those who wish to approach Rome by train. Civil Protection also confirmed that 500 parking spaces for buses and coaches have been reserved for the same day in Rome and its surroundings.
130 international delegations have already confirmed their presence at the event, but it is expected that the final figure may rise to 170. Fifty will be headed by heads of state or government, including a dozen sovereigns.
120,000 arrivals planned in Rome on April 25 and 26, which will translate into about 320,000 overnight stays, according to figures from the Department of Tourism of the Italian capital, which warns that the estimates may be below even those that finally occur. 101,000 of those arrivals will take place in hotels and another 53,000 in “supplementary establishments”.
11,000 soldiers and members of the security forces, not counting the teams of the international delegations, who will ensure that the funeral is held without incident. Police, police officers and traffic officers will join at least 1,500 soldiers.
5 anti-drone bazooas, capable of intercepting the radio frequencies with which these devices are operated, which will reinforce the decreed no-fly zone over the Roman sky.
International
“A dignified life” for migrants, the plea in Panama in memory of Pope Francis
Catholics who work with some of the 299 migrants deported by the United States to Panama, beg the Government that beyond placing the flag at half-mast for the death of Pope Francis this week, it should pay tribute to him by giving “a dignified life” to the migrants, as the Supreme Pontiff preached.
“Never forget your human dignity,” because “you are not a discard,” the pope wrote last year in a message addressed to the thousands of migrants who had just crossed the dangerous Darién jungle, the natural border between Colombia and Panama, on their way to the United States.
Known by many as “the pope of migrants” for his defense of those who are forced to leave their land in search of better living conditions, he himself recalled then that he was “son of migrants who went out in search of a better future,” and that “there were times when they were left with nothing, until they went hungry; with empty hands, but their hearts full of hope.”
Therefore, members of Catholic organizations that are part of the CLAMOR Network (the Latin American and Caribbean Ecclesiastical Network for Migration, Displacement, Refuge and Trafficking in Persons), and who work with dozens of migrants in the Panamanian capital deported by the United States, remember the teachings of Pope Francis.
Elías Cornejo, coordinator of social promotion and attention to the migrant population of the Catholic organization Fe y Alegría, which is part of the Clamor Network, explained to EFE in a migrant shelter that we must “look for alternatives for these people, they cannot be kept in conditions that are not favorable or dignified.”
“In the context of the death of Pope Francis, who was incisive in insisting on humane treatment of migrants, I believe that this country that declares itself mostly Catholic (…) beyond the flag at half-mast, I would also ask the national government to dignify that memory of Pope Francis by giving an answer to many people who (…) have the right to have a dignified life,” Cornejo stressed.
“Give them that, try to find a human, Christian, evangelical answer,” he insisted.
The pilgrimage of this group of migrants through Panama began in mid-February, when a total of 299 arrived on three planes from the United States within the framework of an agreement that turned the Central American nation into a “joup” country for their repatriation.
Coming from extracontinental nations such as China, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, Pakistan or Nepal, 188 returned to their countries “voluntarily”, according to the latest official information available, and 111 refused to do so, many of them fearing for their lives.
The entire group was first housed in a central hotel in the Panamanian capital, and those who refused to be repatriated to their countries were transferred to a shelter more than 200 kilometers away, near the Darién jungle.
Then, after the decision last March by the Government of Panama to grant them a temporary humanitarian permit for 30 days, extendable up to 90, to find a way out of their situation, they took them back to the capital, although now without any type of logistical support, so the CLAMOR Network occupied that vacuum by first hosting the migrants in a humble hotel in the city, to transfer them days later to one of its shelters.
According to Cornejo, who underlines the support they receive in the shelter of “non-believing people, believing people, Muslim people, people of other religions too,” of the 69 migrants who moved there – families with children continue to stay in a hotel – 47 remain, since they “make their own decisions and move” by their own decision to other places.
“We don’t know where, we have an idea, but we don’t want to keep them or force them to anything, because they are free, they are not people who are imprisoned (…) We don’t want to pressure them, we don’t want to pressure the Government, but we do want to tell them again, ‘please, let’s find a way out of this’. An exit that has to be worthy for the State and for them, for migrants,” he remarked.
At least, he says, from the Foreign Ministry they have guaranteed that they will not deport anyone by force if the new 60-day period ends, an extension that ends in June and that, according to official data shared with EFE, at least 80 migrants have requested.
Two mothers from Asian countries who requested with their children the extension of the “temporary resident permit for humanitarian reasons”, as indicated in the document to which EFE had access, and who asked for anonymity, insisted that returning to their country is not an option, since if they return their “lives are in danger”.
Housed in a humble hotel in the center of the Panamanian capital, on a floor where behind each door there is a family of different nationality, they explain to EFE through a translation application part of their journey to the United States, crossing several countries of America with their minor children, and then their sudden expulsion without knowing the destination, some handcuffed hand and foot.
“When they put me on the plane I felt suffocated. His hands and feet were cold. My heart was beating fast, I had high blood pressure. I told the military,” recalls one of them. There were men and women handcuffed, the children were terrified. They are adults, but children are not, “how can they treat them as criminals?”
Now, they say, they are “afraid” that the day will come when the deadline they were given to stay in Panama will expire. “When this document ends, I don’t know exactly what will happen to us if the United States doesn’t get us out of here.”
“We want to ask Donald Trump to return us to the United States, please,” they begged.
A magnitude 6 earthquake shakes the province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador, bordering Colombia
Preparations for Pope Francis’ funeral, in figures
“A dignified life” for migrants, the plea in Panama in memory of Pope Francis
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