The Manager rejects the law for the citizen to choose between AFP and the Government

In view of the Citizen Community Law (CC) project, in which it proposes that citizens be the ones to choose between the Public Long-Term Social Security Manager or the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP), the entity in charge of managing their contributions pension funds, Jaime Durán, manager of the Public Manager, rejected this possibility, considering it unconstitutional.

Durán came up against the opposition senator Andrea Barrientos who proposes to modify the Pensions Law, indicating that this request is a contravention of the Political Constitution of the State (CPE), since in its article 45 it indicates in relation to social security that “its direction and administration corresponds to the State”.
In addition, it establishes that “public social security services may not be privatized or concessioned.” It is mandatory, so presenting a bill that implies that the AFPs continue to operate in Bolivia, beyond the times defined in current regulations, as Senator Barrientos points out, contravenes the CPE of our country, he remarked Duran.
In this regard, Barrientos maintained that said project is 100% constitutional and clarified that it is not proposed that these resources be managed by private parties, but that the administration be delegated -which in his opinion is totally constitutional- and that if the Government does not he accepts is because he wants to be free to take the more than $23,000 million that are in the AFPs and thus get out of the economic disaster.
Regarding article 45, paragraph VI of the CPE, Barrientos stressed that this is the only constitutional provision that says that only public social security services cannot be privatized or concessioned.
“But nowhere does it indicate that social security is public. Only the Constitution says that it is the responsibility of the State to direct and administer social security. Neither is it prohibited for private entities such as the AFPs to provide a private social security service,” insisted the legislator.
Alberto Bonadona, former director of the National Service of the Distribution System (Senasir), had his reservations about the CC bill, considering that to be viable the Magna Carta would have to be modified, an aspect that he considers unlikely.
He also noted Barrientos’s argument that the possibility of a person being able to choose the administrator of their contributions, because that would generate competition between the AFPs. “That is a lie, currently the two AFPs have agreed and do not compete. Nothing in the future indicates that this situation will change,” Bonadona observed.
David Villarreal, an expert in social security, argued that in an ideal scenario it would be appropriate for one as a contributor to choose where to deposit their retirement savings. If you trust the State or prefer the private.
“But there is a small problem and I don’t know if the designers of Comunidad Ciudadana contemplated it and that is that in order to move forward the Political Constitution must be modified and that is not an easy task. So the proposal remains halfway,” warned Villarreal.