The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) has been so negatively affected by Government’s “appetite” for its funds that Barbadians might need to continue working into their retirement years as part of a solution to this “habit of borrowing”.
Seasoned Barbadian actuary Charles Herbert made this recommendation yesterday as part of efforts to “keep our dependency ratios at a higher level and keep our cost of national insurance down”.
Herbert, who is principal at Eckler Partners Limited Barbados, was speaking at Hilton Barbados Resort during a panel discussion at the Caribbean Actuarial Association’s 24th annual conference.
“The number of people contributing to the number of people drawing is going to fall steadily in the future. Really, what we need is a new paradigm. People are not retiring at 60 and going home and doing nothing, people are not any longer reaching the peak of their career and suddenly stopping. What we need to do is to encourage a society which keeps working for longer but realise that they reached their peak before they reached their retirement; people like me,” he said. (SC)
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