BELIZE CITY, Sun. Apr. 11, 2021– During his budget presentation, Prime Minister John Briceño said that the cost of non-contributory pension payments has become untenable. While outlining his austerity budget, he mentioned that a major aspect of his government’s long-term recovery plan is to engage in urgent public pension reform.

“Noncontributory pension payments in the budget have neared $100 million for a single year. That level of spending is simply untenable. When we left office in 2008, the annual cost of pensions was $38 million. Today that has virtually tripled,” PM Briceño said.

He said that the structure of the pension program would have to be revisited and that they intend to transform the pension program to a contributory scheme, with payment coming either from employers or beneficiaries or both, or they might merge the public pension program with the Social Security system.”

“Government must move now to transform the public pension scheme to a contributory structure, either standing on its own with payments from both employer and beneficiary or a merger of the public pension program and the Social Security System,” said PM Briceño.

For years, the previous administration had avoided addressing the issue of non-contributory pension payments until now.