Global crisis: reforms to Social Security Laws in Mexico to face global crisis

Next days President Felipe Calderon will send to Congress an initiative to modify social security laws in order to support workers laid off during 2009, as a consequence of the global crisis.
Nowadays the Law of IMSS allows unemployed workers to make withdrawals from their individual accounts for retirement every five years and after forty five days unemployed. The amount of withdrawals depends on the balance accumulated on the workers account and it could be the smallest amount between 75 days of his average wage of last 250 weeks or 10% of his account.
With the initiative that the President will send, the period of five years will be reduced to three, and mean amount of withdrawals will increase 60%. In order to avoid a reduction in the pension, the government will increase its contribution, social quota.
Despite this initiative will give to workers the opportunity to get more sources to face unemployment, we have to mention that every time that a worker withdraws money of this account, his registered period of contributions is reduced, which implies that the workers must extend his active work participation to get his old-age pension.