Wing Thye Woo questioned why the authors propose raising the retirement age, because if people stay longer in government, then the pension's financial gap will rise. Subsequently, however, he realized that when someone stays in government, the replacement ratio will also rise. In this case, the replacement is actually paid a higher (100 percent) percentage of salary as pension.
Maria Socorro Gochoco-Bautista asked why the return on investment is assumed to be 5 percent, given low interest rates globally. She also asked whether it was possible to consider giving larger benefits rather than higher wages to civil servants as a way to keep a lid on pensions. Finally, she asked whether government could consider use of the inflation tax as a way to reduce the deficit burden from pensions.
Mohamed Ariff Syed Mohamed pointed out that after the goods and servcies tax, government tax receipts rose to 17 percent of...