Rama with pensioners in Berat: Annual doubling of growth guaranteed 100% in the budget
Following his visit to Berat, Prime Minister Rama held a conversation today with the city's pensioners with a focus on economic growth in the country and the benefits it brought to this category.
The Prime Minister emphasized that the increase in pensions is directly linked to the strengthening of the economy and the consolidation of the social security scheme. He underlined that only through a growing economy and increased budget revenues has it become possible to draft a sustainable financial plan for the progressive increase in pensions. The Prime Minister announced that the new scheme provides for guaranteed annual increases in the budget, ensuring that each increase achieved is followed by an even greater increase in the following years, which constitutes an important step towards the gradual improvement of pensioners' incomes.
The Prime Minister also focused on the additional support that the government has provided for this category through bonuses, which are given specifically in certain periods and come as an addition to the pension, complementing the policy of gradual income growth and strengthening the pension scheme. According to the Prime Minister, this mechanism has been used continuously to increase direct support to pensioners, in parallel with structural improvements to the social security system and the sustainable increase in pensions.
Excerpt from Prime Minister Rama's speech to Berat pensioners
Thank you very much! I am also very glad that we are given the opportunity to have this simple conversation. First, I am really glad that I stayed in this position until it became possible to finally define a financial plan supported by the budget for a real overcoming of pensions, from the insufficiency where they were, to a reasonable level, not sufficient, but reasonable. I say this because, from the beginning, pensioners have been a priority for me and for us, but increasing pensions has been the most difficult and is always the most difficult, because you know very well that pensions function on the basis of a social security scheme and if the social security scheme is not solid, but instead of being a solid scheme it is a big hole like the one we inherited, then it becomes extremely difficult to imagine a reasonable increase in pensions without endangering the foundations of the entire economy. And for this reason, you know very well, I have repeatedly told you when you asked me that we have a priority, but we must grow the economy and we must increase opportunities so that we can access this priority; otherwise it is impossible.
It was often brought to attention: "MPs' salaries are not increasing", "salaries are not increasing". Now, MPs' salaries are 140; if we were to close the parliament altogether, even if it were far away, and distribute those salaries for pensions, it would be a drop in the ocean. Similarly, the increase in the salaries of others is something that should always make pensioners happy, because with every salary that increases, there is an increased insurance contribution and that insurance contribution goes to you. But in any case, it was very clear that the impossibility was very stressful and the moment came when we clearly saw the opportunity. We clearly saw the opportunity, because we went through a first phase of governance, closing countless holes of debt and all kinds of irresponsibility. Then, we started serious investments and, despite having to deal with an earthquake, a pandemic, and even the consequences on energy prices of a war that had nothing to do with us at all, we managed to be the only country - and I say this with great pride - that has not increased, but has reduced the price of electricity, and now we have managed to come to you and see you without the great embarrassment of "we have nothing to tell you about pensions."
Because the growth scheme, through that level that the minister mentioned, with an annual doubling of the previous year's growth, is 100% guaranteed in the budget. So everyone should know that what you have increased this January, which continues every month of course, will double next January, triple in January 2028, quadruple in January 2029, and quintuple in January 2030.
Of course, this is unfortunate for you, but we have to say it like it is, you are the last generation with a pen and paper; the other generations have eyes and ears. But when it comes to pen and paper, you have seen that an entire opposition party was led by someone who did not know multiplication, which shows that the level of arithmetic of those who had elected him to lead was even worse and this work of multiplication and division will go even worse. Then the day will come when addition and subtraction will also be affected. But you know the pen, you know the paper and, above all, I am very amused by those who go out without a pen and paper to these nightclubs and open the lids of pots and say: "Pensioners vote for the Socialist Party, because they are communists."
In fact, you are the ones who would have made the fate and success of every moderator; even Blendi Fevziu, if he understood, would have raised the level of political debate in his salon much higher, if he had hired pensioners to discuss the topics of the day and not hired so-called analysts, who are people with problems of various natures, but who are so serious and so sincere with the Albanian people and with you, that they talk under the light of the cameras about poverty and pensions and then, when the cameras are turned off, they take the money in their hands, in the black, that is, they do not contribute to pensions, perhaps not all of them 100%. But look at it and understand one thing: whoever talks about you the most in the studio is the one who pays you the least from his salary, because he takes most of his salary in the black, so as not to give you his pension, because he has no respect for you, no compassion for you and he wants you to be "meat for a cannon" to oppose you to the government. But this is an impossible mission and this is the truth, regardless of how good or bad it may be or what they may say after this.
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