GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) sup­ports hav­ing self-em­ployed peo­ple be­ing put on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem, in ad­di­tion to the pro­posed grad­ual in­crease of the re­tire­ment age from 60 to 65.

SJ­BA pres­i­dent Ja­son Roach con­firmed the group’s po­si­tion, yes­ter­day. He spoke on the is­sue fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee meet­ing, where NIB of­fi­cials spoke about the need to sus­tain NIB's fund and dis­cus­sions with the Fi­nance Min­istry on grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing the re­tire­ment age from 60 to 65 years and putting self-em­ployed peo­ple on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem

The SJ­BA is­sued a state­ment, say­ing:

“Much has been men­tioned about an im­pend­ing NIB 'crash'. This has the po­ten­tial to af­fect the most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens in so­ci­ety. These are cit­i­zens that have paid their dues in con­tribut­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try over the years. Small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es in this con­ver­sa­tion can­not con­tin­ue to be over­looked in solv­ing na­tion­al prob­lems. In this re­gard, we re­fer to in­di­vid­ual en­tre­pre­neurs across var­i­ous in­dus­tries."

"These as­tute and ac­com­plished busi­ness­peo­ple rep­re­sent le­git­i­mate busi­ness and in­clude but not lim­it­ed to; Taxi dri­vers, Farm­ers, Plumbers, Elec­tri­cians, Aes­theti­cians, Bar­bers, Nail Tech­ni­cians, and Car­pen­ters to name a few," the re­lease added.

SJ­BA not­ed NIB's ex­pen­di­ture has grown by 12.5 per­cent over the past cou­ple years while rev­enue con­tri­bu­tions have de­clined by 2%, which it said, “is as a re­sult of the clo­sure of var­i­ous sec­tors dur­ing this pan­dem­ic."

"Nev­er­the­less, SJ­BA rec­og­nizes pro­posed so­lu­tions such as in­creas­ing the re­tire­ment age from 60 to 65 years. We strong­ly be­lieve that we must go fur­ther. From a broad­er per­spec­tive, bring­ing more flu­id­i­ty in­to the sys­tem can deal with sit­u­a­tions like this im­pend­ing NIB crash," the busi­ness lob­by point­ed out.

It added: "At this time, self-em­ployed per­sons are un­able to make NIS con­tri­bu­tions. In re­al­i­ty, some per­sons have al­ready made con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing pre­vi­ous reg­u­lar em­ploy­ment and at this time as well as the fu­ture, are un­able to ben­e­fit from a pen­sion and oth­er ben­e­fits. We have been con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed through var­i­ous com­plaints dai­ly on this is­sue. It is not an in­cen­tive to bol­ster the econ­o­my and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in the coun­try. We need to make 'cents' for NIB and the coun­try."