Peruvian Pensions: Principles as Taxes?

The Peruvian congress has approved, and President Alan Garcia has signed into law, the so-called “Free Separation” Libre Desafiliación pension reform. The basic point: Peruvians who, as late as 1995, migrated themselves to the private fully-funded system, can go back to the public defined-benefits system, beginning next August, pending a 3-month waiting period. The bill has other components, such a guaranteed minimum private pension, but, alas, let us think about one thing at a a time.
President García could not be happier. Macarena, a fan of all things virile, was especially thrilled by the following phrase: “(…) one can make economic estimates, one can make actuarial estimates, but principles will not be sacrificed” (see here). Bravo, big guy!! she applauded avidly.
But then, as usual, she composed herself. The Peruvian system, set up in 1993, combines a public defined-benefits network (SNP), along with a private defined-contributions system (SPP), currently operated by four pension fund administrators, AFP.
Until the new law, any worker could migrate from SNP to SPP, and could also move within SPP from one operator to another. But, wisely, thinks Macarena, no-one could migrate back from SPP to SNP. The total potential number of affiliates who could now migrate back to SNP has been estimated at 600 thousand, about 15% of total membership.
This is a bad thing for many reasons, chiefly because Macarena, for one, would migrate only if the defined benefits to which she moves, add some taxpayer money to her defined contributions. Otherwise she would not trouble herself with all the paperwork. By definition, then, all migration amounts to a claim on future taxpayers, the size of which depends on the difference between the defined benefit and the market value of savings.
On the other hand, as assets from migrating accounts are transferred back to the Government, a debt write down will immediately occur, stemming from the fact that the debt is no longer held by the public. This, of course, simply shifts the denomination of a future claim, held by the affiliate who migrated in the first place, from an explicit piece of paper, to an implicit –equally binding-- defined benefit.
The main point: a new tax has been created. This simple point, Macarena thinks, is the exact, mundane, meaning of what President Garcia much more thrillingly, described the “principles that will not be sacrificed”. Certainly the right to tax ranks up there with the best of them!!