How the pension amount is calculated
The GPSSA pension is built from an averaged salary and a service-based accrual rate, both set out in Federal Decree-Law No. 57 of 2023. This page states the rule; it does not compute a figure from your own salary — see below for why.
The formula
The pension is built in two steps. First, GPSSA averages the subscription account salary over the last 6 years of the subscription period — or the whole period, if it is shorter (art. 18(2)). That average, unadjusted, is the base the accrual rate below is applied to.
The accrual rate then climbs in two bands, set out in one sentence of art. 19(1):
| Years of service | Accrual rate |
|---|---|
| Up to 30 years | 2.67% per year |
| Beyond 30 years | 4% per year |
The running total is capped at 100% of the averaged salary — a person’s pension can never exceed the base it is calculated from, however long they have served.
The statutory minimum
If that calculation comes out below AED 10,000 a month, the pension is topped up to that minimum (art. 19(4)). The government pays the difference to GPSSA itself, not out of the individual’s own account.
Long service beyond 35 years
The two accrual bands already reach the 100% cap at roughly 35 years of service on their own arithmetic. For service beyond that, art. 19(5) grants a separate, one-off reward — 3 months’ worth of pension-account salary for each additional year — rather than a further accrual band on top of the cap.
Why this page does not calculate your pension
The figure above averages the “subscription account salary” — a defined pensionable-salary concept the law does not equate with gross pay — and applies only to someone insured under the 2023 law (see who this covers). This site has no reliable way to ask a reader which figure they hold or which law governs them, so rather than run their entered salary through a formula that may not be theirs, this page states the rule and lets you check it against your own GPSSA statement.
The averaging window is short — 6 years, not a career — so there is nothing to revalue to today’s money: art. 18 takes a plain average of the nominal salary figures from those years, with no indexation step of its own.
Art. 19(6) lets the Cabinet raise the statutory minimum above in line with inflation, on the Minister’s recommendation and as GPSSA’s finances allow — but that is a discretionary power over the floor stated above, not a standing rule that increases pensions already in payment more generally.
No money ceiling on the pension itself was found. Art. 19(1) caps the accrual percentage at 100%, not a cash maximum, and the salary that percentage applies to carries no ceiling of its own in this law. A different figure — the subscription account salary GPSSA collects contributions on — is capped, but that governs contributions, not this benefit; see the GPSSA contribution page.