Spain agrees plan to raise retirement age to 67 - Channel NewsAsia

Spain agrees plan to raise retirement age to 67 - Channel NewsAsia: "Spain's government said Friday it had agreed to raise the retirement age to 67 from 65, a bitterly fought reform aimed at repairing public finances and soothing markets.

Closely watched by markets as a sign of Madrid's determination to keep long-term spending on track, the outline deal was reached after one-and-a-half months of talks with unions and business chiefs.

An agreement with the country's two major unions was reached in the early hours of the morning ahead of the cabinet meeting.

'The deal is important,' Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference after a cabinet meeting approved the scheme.

'It seeks to confront the great problem of Spanish society: economic recovery and job creation, that is the heart of it,' he said on a day Spain announced a 13-year record unemployment rate of 20.33 percent at the end of
2010."

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