The average pension for senior citizens in the Czech Republic crossed 15,000 crowns for the first time this year, reveal stats from the Czech Social Security Administration (CSSZ). The CSSZ paid out an average of 15,351 crowns monthly to retirees by the end of the first quarter.

In a year-on-year comparison, CSSZ expenditures grew while the total number of allocated old-age pensions dropped, largely due to effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Czech pensions rose in January 2021, increasing by an average of 839 crowns in accordance with recent legislation.

CSSZ expenditures for the first quarter of 2021 were 5.5 billion crowns higher than the same time last year, totaling 106.2 billion crowns. The administration distributed 2.39 million pensions, 26,900 fewer than last year.

The total number of pensions had been on the increase in recent years, but this trend reversed last year due to the coronavirus epidemic, according to experts. Significantly more elderly people died in 2020 compared with the preceding years.

At the beginning of its tenure,the Czech government led by Andrej Babiš’s ANO party promised to reach a 15,000-crown threshold by October this year. The government increased pensions twice as high as stipulated by law; on average, retired people saw their pensions increase by 749 crowns in 2020 and 600 crowns in 2019.

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