Within the current year, his main (default) portfolio will be available TEKA as stated by the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security Panos Tsakloglou guest on Talk Radio 98.9 adding that within the next two years both the more conservative and more aggressive portfolios will be available.

According to him, this will enable the insured to distribute their contributions as they wish.

He noted that outstanding main pensions have been significantly reduced and the same is the case with ancillary pensions, while the average time to award pensions from 18 months in 2019 has been reduced to two months.

“We had many hundreds of thousands of outstanding pensions – most of them principal. The average award time in that period was close to 18 months, while today this number has dropped to just 2 months” he said and added “There is still a small stock of overdue pensions, but these are on the one hand much less than they used to be and their awarding time is also much shorter.”

Mr. Tsakloglou commented on the legislative initiative that enables the self-employed who have debts of up to 30,000 euros to receive a pension, as long as certain conditions are met, namely 20 years of paid contributions and bank deposits below 12,000.

Finally, he mentioned the possibility given to pensioners to work without any cut in their pension. A measure, which, as he said, was warmly welcomed by the pensioners and while, previously there were around 36 thousand working pensioners, the corresponding number is now well over 80 thousand.