<Anchor>



Last weekend, plans for pension reform were discussed at a private advisory committee set up by the Special Committee on Pensions in the National Assembly.

There was no disagreement about the need to raise insurance premiums, but opinions differed on specific measures.



Reporter Shin Yong-sik summarized what kind of discussion was going on.



<Reporter>



Private advisory committee members could not come to any conclusion in the two-day discussion from last Friday.



There was a great deal of disagreement about the 'earnings replacement rate', which shows how much of the average earnings over the period of pension subscription can be received as a pension after retirement.



The higher the replacement rate, the greater the increase in insurance premiums.



At the beginning of the meeting, there was a conflict between the plan to maintain the income replacement rate at 40% and raise the insurance premium rate to 15% to stabilize the pension finances, and the plan to raise the insurance rate to around 15% but expand the income replacement rate to 50%.



Then, a proposal to compromise the income replacement rate to 45% and a proposal to lower the income replacement rate to 30% and raise the insurance premium to only 12% for financial stability were added.



The important thing is that all of these four proposals are ways to raise the insurance premium rate by more than 3 percentage points from the current 9%.



It is said that an increase in the insurance premium rate is inevitable in order to maintain the national pension, but the Ministry of Health and Welfare drew a line saying that it was not a government plan.



[Cho Kyu-hong/Minister of Health and Welfare: There are reports in some media that the national pension insurance premium rate will be raised, so I would like to explain the government's position in this regard.

This is not a government bill.]



The private advisory committee, which originally decided to submit a draft reform bill to the National Assembly today (31st), plans to submit the reform bill to the National Assembly by the middle of next month after further discussion.



(Video coverage: Hojun Choi, CG: Jegalchan)