Prime Minister Edi Rama today revealed a new Social Resilience Package designed to provide medium-term support to help Albanian citizens from the effects of the global crisis. The new Package also materializes and delivers on the government commitment to grant Albanian citizens medium-term and sustainable support to mitigate and cope with the ramifications of the ongoing global crisis, by intervening in a number of directions.
Under the new social assistance package, pensions will be re-indexed for the first time according to the latest inflation rate, taking the annual indexation to 9.5% • The monthly social assistance payment will be indexed by 10%, whereas it will double for the female family heads with two or more children to 20% •The disability allowance will be indexed by 7.5%. The social assistance package also stipulates financial support and compensation for the electricity bill for the blind, paraplegic and tetraplegics • The minimum monthly wage will increase to 34000 lek, while public administration employees, State Police and Penitentiary Police workers will see their pay increasing under the new Package• It also increase financial assistance for the excise-free oil for farmers and fishermen, confirms continued support for the public transport and makes sure that the electricity price is not increased for the households and small businesses.
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Good day everyone! I would like to just point out that the package is designed as a medium-term support measure, not as a temporary one usually lasting one, two or three months, which means that we have taken into account the fact this is an unpredictable crisis nature, as nobody can for sure say when it is going to end, and we are committed to provide our people medium-term, sustainable assistance and to intervene in a number of directions and today’s decisions are made to last. What I would like to say by this is that the decision to index pensions, for example, will be always there and it is irreversible. Pensions are indexed once a year, usually in April. And this was the case, as the pensions were indexed in April this year, taking into consideration the inflation effect. However, monthly pensions are being re-indexed for the first time within a year, according to the new inflation rate estimated at around 6 %. The combined pension indexation this year is 9.5%. This will be the case for the disability allowance that is indexed each year. Under the government’s new social assistance package, the disability benefit will be indexed by 7.5% for all people with disabilities.
-The social assistance payment will be increased by 10%, while the social assistance payment to the female family heads with two will double to 20%. Under the previous social resilience package, we doubled the social assistance payment to female family heads with three children, but the measure will now expand to include women with two children. In other words, all jobless female family heads will receive doubled social assistance payment. We will go on with the pay rise programme by next year under the state budget, as we have already announced for the employees in priority sectors. After having increased salaries of the servicemen, doctors, nurses and teachers in July, we will announce a new pay rise again. Under the new medium-term Package, the government will increase the wages of the public administration employees, who haven’t actually seen their wages growing for a long time indeed. We will also increase salaries for the State Police and the Penitentiary Police members, whose monthly wages haven’t increased for a long time too, after a massive increase we announced several years ago. The new Package will also increase the minimum monthly salary for the second time this year.
-The minimum monthly wage will go up to 34,000 lek from 32,000 lek currently. In other words, there should not be and will not be a monthly salary lower than 34,000 lek in the Republic of Albania. Through these interventions, we are confidently avoiding temporary two or three-month long assistance packages and form the important and expanded basis of a resilience package for all categories vis-à-vis the inflation rate in the country and therefore we make sure that the purchasing power doesn’t fall dramatically, but quite on the contrary we ensure the continued movement in the economy, as we have already seen to date.
We stick to a sort of a three-point package, just like it was the case with the previous assistance package we announced earlier this year, to include also continued support for farmers by granting them excise-free oil, grow funding, ensure exemption of fishermen from VAT, and continue support for the public transport so that the public transport fares are not increased.
Albania is today the only country in the region and Europe to have made a decisive political decision not to increase the electricity price for household consumers and small businesses.
Such support measures and the government relief packages are the main reason why Albania currently has the inflation rate in the region and an inflation rate reasonably lower than in any country in the euro-zone, because we haven’t increased the electricity price, which would have led to a domino effect by increasing prices on all goods and commodities.
Each consumed kilowatt hour above an 800- KW/hour band will be paid according to the market price and by this measure we are seeking to cut excessive use of electricity or consumption amid an ongoing energy crisis.
Boosting electricity generating capacities, ensuring continued generation of electricity domestically and transformation of Albania into a net energy exporter are our ambition and our plan.
To all those who calculate every package, here and there, I am telling that what I already said was just a summarization of the package and the Minister of Finance and economy and the Minister of Energy will elaborate it. However, the package provides financial support at crisis time and is designed to help cope with the effects of this crisis, estimated at around half a billion.
