Marcos names new SSS president

FILE / REUTERS

President Marcos has appointed former Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) President and General Manager Rolando Ledesma Macasaet as acting president and chief executive officer of the Social Security System (SSS).

The Presidential Communications Office said that Macasaet took his oath before Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin in Malacañang on Thursday. He replaced Michael Gonzales Regino who was appointed by then President Rodrigo Duterte in March 2022.

In 2018, Macasaet replaced Francisco Duque III as GSIS chair. Before joining the country’s biggest state-run pension fund, he was a member of San Miguel Corp.’s board of directors. The SSS is set to increase its contribution from 13 percent to 14 percent starting this month under Republic Act No. 11199, or the Social Security Act of 2018. Under the law, the contribution rate will increase by 1 percent every two years until it reaches 15 percent by 2025.

The SSS earlier said that employers would shoulder the increase while individual paying members, such as self-employed, nonworking spouses and overseas Filipino workers, would shoulder the additional contribution. —NESTOR CORRALES