Last week, we told you that Cabinet has given the greenlight to the Social Security Board to resume with the final 1% increase in the rate of SSB's contributions.
That's after Government chose to defer the increase in contributions last year. That means that, come next month, your SSB contributions will increase to a total contribution to 10% of the $520.00 ceiling on insurable earnings - that's a total of $52.00 - 28.60 from employers and 23.40 from employees, for all those making $500.00 or more per week.
And with public officers already on a 10% cut, and everybody feeling the pinch from the COVID economic crunch, you might be wary of even less money in your wallet. But the PM says it's either 1% now, or a whole lot more later.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"First of all, this decision was made way before we came into government, Social Security went through extensive consultations countrywide so it is only after consultations were made that the government of the day passed legislation to increase social security contributions. Last year, when we just got into government, we realized we were in a crisis in this country, we still are, but it was very bad so we decided to defer it for one year, so everyone knew it was coming one year from now, hoping to give a little settle for businesses in particular, more the businesses than the employees because it's an investment in your future when you pay monies into Social Security and we've been raising the bands from which you can insure your earnings and retirement that now it will help the very same public officers that are earning above $300 so that now they are going to be having a larger portion of their salaries insured so when they retire, they can get more in return. So it's just a continuation, something that had to be done. If we don't do it now, if don't do that 1% increase, the numbers have shown by the actuary of Social Security that by 2024, the fund will be in equilibrium, meaning that every dollar we're collecting we're paying out a dollar and that would mean we have to increase the contributions more than 1% so it's best we do it now to give the fund a chance to build up, so that's all we're doing."
