SSS revenue up 6% in ’18
The Social Security System (SSS) last year managed to increase its net income as intensified collections from members grew revenues faster than expenditures despite the bigger benefits being enjoyed by pensioners.
In a statement over the weekend, the state-run pension fund said its revenue in 2018 rose 6 percent to P212.6 billion from P200.5 billion in 2017, citing unaudited financial records.
The growth in revenue outpaced the 5.3-percent rise in expenses to P189.8 billion from 2017’s P180.2 billion.
As such, the SSS posted a net income of P22.8 billion in 2018, up 2.5 percent from P20.3 billion in the previous year.
To recall, the SSS’s net profit in 2017 dropped 37 percent from 2016’s P32 billion as it implemented the P1,000 monthly pension hike approved by President Duterte.
SSS President and Chief Executive Emmanuel Dooc attributed the higher revenue mainly to a 13.9-percent jump in collections of members’ contributions to P181.9 billion from P159.7 billion in 2017.
“We are very pleased that we have ended the year 2018 on a positive notch. Contribution collection comprised more than 86 percent of our total revenue last year,” according to Dooc.
The increase in expenditures, meanwhile, was mostly due to larger benefit payments worth P180.1 billion as employees’ compensation benefits were adjusted in mid-2018.
Operating expenses only had a slight uptick to P9.8 billion from P9.5 billion in 2017.
“Benefit payment was P9.39-billion higher than last year. Increase in the number of benefit claims rose by an average of 7 percent in the last six months of the year. The implementation of the employees’ compensation benefit adjustment also contributed to the increase in benefit disbursements along with the release of the 13th-month pension of qualified pensioners and their dependents,” Dooc said. —BEN O. DE VERA
