Coye's letter states that the proposed increments are contingent upon the joint unions' acceptance that pension reform be implemented in two phases, with a "contributory pension scheme implemented for new workers including the increase of retirement age to 60 with effect from October 1, 2025; and contributory pension scheme implemented for existing workers at the earliest possibility."
That caused the unions to bristle since pension reform has been an ongoing discussion - and making it a requirement now seemed like an act of bad faith.
Coye acknowledged the ongoing conversation:
Christopher Coye, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance
"I think the pension reform, propositions that's been on the table, that's been ongoing, a part of the ongoing discussions between the government and the joint unions for a couple of years now there's been quite a bit of analysis but what is absolutely clear. Certainly what I've seen is there has been miscommunication, if not misinformation being provided to the public by the joint unions so far as, what the reform proposals constitute, there is no proposition that all existing public officers and teachers will immediately have to pay 5% contribution. That's totally inaccurate. What is in fact the case and what is, being, put on as the proposition is an incremental move from non-contributory to a contributory pension plan. There is no non contributory pension plan for public officers in the entirety of the Caribbean and Latin America. It's a total anomaly that it continues to exist in Belize, but at the same time, I think the government recognises that there has to be a process. There has to be a process, both in relation to contribution rate, in relation to retirement age and in relation to the replacement rate in relation to the contribution rate. What, through the analysis done by both the SSB actuary and the IMF, is that, a contribution or contributory pension scheme be introduced in an incremental way over a period of ten years, with a half % increment being introduced each year until you reach the 5% at the end of ten years."
