LabMin Turcan: Minimum wage to be indexed, pensions to be increased this year at least with inflation rate

The minimum wage will be indexed on Wednesday, in the Government meeting, by 3.1%, namely 70 lei gross, and the pensions will be increased this year at least by the inflation rate, Minister of Labor Raluca Turcan told private broadcaster Digi 24 Tuesday evening. As for pensions, she pointed out that two laws are now in force, the old Law 263, "in which the pension point is updated in relation to the inflation rate and 50% of the average gross earnings". "Based on that law, we made the increase by 14% at the end of last year. Normally, pensions should have been indexed to the inflation rate at the beginning of the year, but what did the politicians do? They quickly put into electoral logic and arranged the increases during a period of electoral campaign. This Law 127/2019, published in the Official Journal, should enter into force as of 1 September, but with a few articles extended until 1 September, which would have a budgetary impact for only 4 months of 48 billion lei and 138 billion lei for next year, because not even the smallest step has been taken and I told you if in the PSD [Social Democratic Party] Government in 90 days they came with the updating of all pensions, no one could back off, because we were ready for the recalculation of pensions," the minister claimed. The Minister of Labor said that the indexation of pensions with the inflation rate will occur in 2021, but did not say when. The minister also specified the correlation of the special pensions with the contribution paid is desirable, stating that at this moment there are 9,600 beneficiaries of service pensions and that there are monthly pensions of over 78,000 lei, 17,000 lei or 41,000 lei, in while 900,000 pensioners live on 800 lei. Regarding the highest paid service pension, of 78,634 lei, the minister showed that it belongs to a person who worked in the legal field.AGERPRES(RO - author: George Banciulea, editor: Oana Tilica; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Maria Voican)