PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has signed into law a measure that provides bigger monthly pensions and benefits to retired officers and employees of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
The President, on May 2, signed Republic Act 12181 or the “Adjusted DFA Retirement Benefits Act.” A copy of the law was uploaded to the Official Gazette yesterday.
Under the law, DFA retirees who are already receiving a monthly pension from the Government Service Insurance Service (GSIS), as well as those who opted to retire under Republic Act 1616 or the “Take All Benefit” law, shall be entitled to a monthly pension differential.
RA 1616 provided the gratuity benefit, instead of monthly pension payments, to those who entered the government service before June 1, 1977.
To qualify for the differential pension, the DFA retiree should have reached 65 years of age and served the DFA for 15 years at the time of retirement.
The differential pension shall be computed as the difference between the adjusted monthly pension the DFA computed and the actual monthly pension that the GSIS provided, which will then be multiplied by an adjustment factor of 50 percent. This adjustment factor is subject to review after five years.
The law states that the adjusted monthly pension should be equal to the monthly salary of an active DFA personnel who is holding the same rank as the last one held by the retiree, and based on the updated salary schedule.
It added that the monthly salary corresponding to Salary Grade Step 1 of the fourth tranche of Republic Act 11466, or the 2019 Salary Standardization Act, will be the basis for computing the adjusted monthly pension of DFA retirees for the first five years.
The DFA shall periodically review the guidelines on computing the monthly pension differential to ensure its feasibility and sustainability, and to prevent adverse or negative impact on the government deficit.
The monthly pension differential shall also be adjusted after the first five years of implementing RA 12181 and every five years thereafter.
Funding for the adjustment shall be sourced from the fees charged for consular services collected under Executive Order No. 906, series of 2010.
The law also provides survivorship benefits wherein the surviving legal spouse and qualified dependent children 18 years and above who are suffering from physical incapacity or disability, shall receive 50 percent of the monthly pension differential that a deceased DFA retiree is entitled to receive.
