INSS expects to pay R$ 2.5 billion more with new benefits in 2022

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The INSS (National Social Security Institute) is expected to close 2022 with an increase of almost 1 million in the number of analyzes of requests for recognition of rights such as retirement and pensions. The projection is to go from 9.33 million cases completed in 2021 to 10.27 million this year, an increase of 10%.

This advance, attributed by the agency to the automatic analysis of requirements implemented this year and to the joint efforts carried out by civil servants to verify processes in the stock, should increase the number of concessions by 460 thousand, which should go from 4.71 million to 5.17 million (the increase is also 10%) compared to last year.

The advance in concessions, however, brings concern to President Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) economic team. The Chief Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira, sent to the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União) a query on the possibility of using credit outside the spending ceiling to cover part of the INSS expenses. The government has already blocked resources in the 2022 Budget and has only R$ 2.4 billion to fund discretionary spending by all ministries in the last month of the year.

At the INSS, spending on new benefits is expected to rise by R$2.5 billion this year. This means 13.8% more compared to the previous year. The bill would go from BRL 18.1 billion in 2021 to almost BRL 20.6 billion in 2022.

Most of this increase in expenses, however, comes from high inflation, which resulted in readjustments in benefits above the 10.16% floor earlier this year.

By October of this year, there had already been an increase of R$ 1.9 billion (12.5%) in the amount allocated to new benefits, compared to the same period last year. The amount went from R$ 15.2 billion to R$ 17.1 billion in the interval.

Also considered numbers from January to October, the INSS increased the analysis of initial requirements by 8%, from 7.9 million to 8.56 million, compared to the same period of 2021.

This resulted in an equal percentage increase in concessions, which went from 3.98 million to 4.31 million in the interval. The number of denied benefits rose 9%, from 3.91 million to 4.25 million.

There is a concern in the body to eliminate the queue for benefits, a problem that is the subject of a judicial agreement approved by the STF (Federal Supreme Court) at the end of 2020.

In October, the stock of processes to be analyzed fell to 976 thousand. This was the first time that the queue was below 1 million in the Bolsonaro government. The peak was recorded in July 2019, when there were 2.56 million pending applications. Earlier this year, the stock was 1.76 million.

This data does not include cases that have already gone through the first evaluation and were the subject of an appeal or are under investigation due to suspected fraud, for example, the sum of which would result in a number of approximately 5 million.

Agency technicians estimate that, with the maintenance of the current pace of completions of up to 800,000 processes per month, for an entry of approximately 600,000 new monthly requests, the queue could be practically zeroed at the beginning of the second quarter of 2023.

Although this agility brought a momentary headache for the government to close its accounts, part of the increase in INSS expenses comes precisely from the history of slowness in concluding processes awaiting analysis.

Of the total BRL 2.5 billion that Social Security will have to overpay with the new benefits in 2022, around BRL 666 million will result from monetary correction.

Considering only the corrections deposited to policyholders from January to October, this amount is already at BRL 555 million, which represents an increase of 53% compared to the BRL 362 million paid in the same period of 2021.

Correction for inflation of amounts owed to policyholders is mandatory whenever the first payment exceeds 45 days. The ideal, considering the law that regulates public services, is that the response to the citizen’s request (positive or not) occurs within 30 days.

Although the new processes under analysis are being answered within the deadline, most of the joint efforts to analyze the old stock resulted in this increase with the correction, explained a technician involved in this process.

The automatic initial analysis of benefits did not significantly change the percentages of requests accepted and denied by the agency when comparing this year’s data, when the “robots” began to perform the service, with last year. %, in 2021, to 50.37%, in 2022, while the negative ones went from 49.49% to 49.63%.

The mechanism has been criticized by lawyers specializing in social security law because, according to them, it results in denial of rights due to registration errors that could be corrected in a face-to-face service.

For the director of judicial action at the IBDP (Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law), Gisele Kravchychyn, the automation of the initial analysis requires a guidance campaign so that policyholders can correctly fill in their registration data, thus avoiding unnecessary refusals. “We’re not saying the technology is bad, but the system needs to be improved,” she said.

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