Álvaro Santos Pereira, governor of the Bank of Portugal (BdP), guaranteed this Wednesday, April 1, that Mário Centeno’s retirement “was a mutual agreement, there was no dismissal or favoritism” and “obeyed all defined rules”.
“The Bank of Portugal and professor Mário Centeno, former governor of the Bank, reached an agreement for his early retirement”, said Álvaro Santos Pereira, in a hearing in Parliament about this process, who said he had obeyed “all defined rules, many of them common to all (workers) in the banking sector and outlined in negotiations with their unions”.
The governor assured that “it was a mutual agreement, there was no dismissal or favoritism, these were Banco de Portugal rules”.
Centeno “retired with a salary level determined by the rules in force and based on the relevance of the functions he previously held”, he explained, pointing out that the worker’s contributory career was taken into account, which “takes into account all public service time, including the periods in which, not being in bank functions, he worked in public bodies and ensured his contributions to the pension fund or other comparable schemes”.
Santos Pereira highlighted that a pension was granted with a replacement rate, which measures the percentage of the last salary in retirement to be received, “lower than the average for bank workers”, having been 72%, while the average replacement rate for a BdP employee is around 78%.
The current governor also defended that being a consultant “is not a career” for the central bank, being a role reserved for staff who, after joining the bank’s Board of Directors or holding top positions outside the bank, “return to the institution without the immediate possibility of reinstatement in management roles, being assigned projects or tasks corresponding directly to the administration”.
When Santos Pereira took office at the central bank, there were eight people as management consultants, one of whom had already planned his retirement.
Furthermore, as of today, “a solution has already been found for five of the seven active management consultants”, including the case of Mário Centeno.
The executive considered that “it is time to change this regime of management consultants”, and the nature of the function “does not justify the associated costs”.
“For the future, I defend that bank employees, appointed to the Board of Directors, can choose between two paths after the end of these functions: reintegration into the bank in a concrete management or management role, and well defined, or after the end of the expected ‘cooling off’ period, the continuation of their professional career outside the institution”, he said.
Savings from the departure of consultants will be applied to BdP in measures for birth rates
The savings that Banco de Portugal will have with the departure of management consultants will be channeled into measures to promote birth rates and parenthood, said Álvaro Santos Pereira in parliament, highlighting that the institution he leads will have savings with the departure of management consultants.
The central bank still had eight consultants when Santos Pereira took over, one of which already had a planned reform, and “a solution has already been found for five of the seven active management consultants”, including the case of Mário Centeno.
These savings “will be applied to measures to promote birth and parenthood”, he said, highlighting that the bank will allow workers to spend up to a year on maternity and paternity leave.
Between six months and nine months, “if people are at home, they receive 80% of their salary, if they are part-time, they receive 100%, and between nine months and 12 months, we allow people to earn 50% of their salary if they stay at home with their children, or they will have 100% of their salary if they are part-time”, he explained.
“I would like this parliament to follow the example of the BdP and move forward with measures to support parenting and birth rates as the BdP established, so that we can retain and develop talents, but also to promote the birth rate in this country, which has been very low for three decades”, he argued.
For the governor, this measure saves on consultants and spends “on what makes a difference”.
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