Meeting between solons, economic team leads to consensus on MUP pension

House Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez (INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO)

Updated

MANILA, Philippines — High-ranking members of the House of Representatives and the administration’s economic team have come to a consensus after a closed-door meeting on how to run and fund the military and uniformed personnel (MUP) pension, Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said in a statement on Wednesday.

Romualdez said the MUP pension was now fully funded, assuring the country’s uniformed personnel that their concerns had been addressed in the long-term sense.

“Our soldiers and uniformed personnel are now assured: their pension plans are now fully funded — not only in 2023 or 2024 but in years to come,” Romualdez said.

“I am happy to report that we have reached a consensus after a three-hour meeting. We all agreed on a solution that we, believe, will be beneficial to all stakeholders in the MUP pension program.”

According to Romualdez, MUP retirees can be assured that their pensions will be paid.

What we are assuring them is that all the pensions of our soldiers and uniformed personnel would be paid for. All the agencies of the government and Congress would help each other to ensure this,” he said in Filipino

“If we can fix the MUP pension program, we can also ensure that there would be additional salaries for our soldiers and uniformed personnel yearly.”

Romualdez said he also instructed the creation of an ad hoc committee to lay down the reforms that would be made.

The committee would be headed by Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda, who chairs the Committee on Ways and Means. He would be joined by the chairpersons and vice chairpersons of the committees on appropriation, national defense, and public order and security.

“We will clarify in the public hearings all the issues involving the MUP. We would listen to all voices. We would ensure that with the new MUP pension program, we would continue providing the benefits for pensioners and that the government would help them raise funds,” Romualdez said.

Salceda backed Romualdez’s promise, saying that the MUP pension issues would be addressed in a long-term setting.

“President Marcos has already helped address the problem by being very responsible about any salary increase for the MUP, before a viable pension system is in place. And with this reform, his government will solve the pension problem for decades to come,” Salceda said.

“This solution also enables a salary increase for the MUP since we can control its fiscal consequences on the pension system. I thank the President and the Speaker for their trust.”

Last July 24, on the eve of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s second State of the Nation Address, Salceda said that they already had a good solution for the MUP pension woes.

Salceda said that the House would propose a 5 percent cap on the yearly salary increases of MUPs, to ensure that the still-unfunded pension liabilities would go down from P9.7 trillion to just P3.6 trillion — a more manageable figure.

Salceda said that it was Marcos himself who asked him, during the signing of the law creating the Maharlika Fund, to find a solution to the issue.

Last May 2023, Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said that the MUP pension fund system needs to be reformed as it might get depleted in just five to six years.

READ: Marcos warns of MUP pension depletion if reforms not done

Initially, there were calls for MUPs to shoulder a huge chunk of the pension by contributing part of their monthly salary.  However, several lawmakers from the Senate warned that this may lead to early retirement of officials from the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, and the Bureau of Fire Protection.

Originally, the pension funds of MUPs were shouldered by the national government — meaning, personnel do not need to contribute to these funds unlike what happens with the government and private sectors security funds, like the Government Service Insurance System and Social Security System.

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