And apart from impacting revenue, the pandemic has also slowed Social Security's contribution reform, which started back in July of last year. That's when the Belizean workers earning a higher wage started paying a bit more of their salary to SSB.
To ensure that there is a fund that your children can collect sick benefits from, higher-earning Belizeans increased their contributions from 8% to 8.5% in 2019. And then, earlier this year, another increase from 8.5% to 9% took effect. The final part of the phased increase from 9% to 10% will be implemented next year.
The increased revenues to SSB should have given the fund some breathing room to recover from the aging Belizean population's needs. But, as you just heard Social Security estimates that it will be reporting approximately 22 million dollars in losses to contribution revenue, due to the many Belizeans who suddenly lost their jobs.
We asked the Acting CEO about how COVID has impacted the expected growth of the SSB fund:
Deborah Ruiz - Acting CEO, SSB "It has impacted us. I could tell you that if we did not have the increase, this year, we'd be in a worse position. So, we're basically back to our pre-COVID numbers. But, we're holding steady. We have another tranche that is supposed to go into effect in January. So, that would - we expect employment to rebound. So, it will be by mid next year that we'll see our numbers coming back up. And then, we hope at that time to start the conversation again with the stakeholders because we were supposed to go into phase 2, to look at automatic triggers to legislate those."
On January 4th, 2020, the first Monday of the New Year, the contribution workers pay to SSB will to increase one final time to complete the 3-year phased increase from 8.5% to 10%.
