The 40 percent increase in pensions is an illusion, because Romania, at no stage of its development, is able to make the necessary budgetary effort for this increase, of 138 billion lei, Minister of Labor and Social Protection Raluca Turcan said on Monday.
"A 40 percent increase in pensions means a budget effort of 138 billion, which Romania could not have afforded at any stage of its development. Moreover, the moment the topic of this illusory increase of 40 percent was opened, a stage of preparation and recalculation of all pensions was necessary, so that, on a new formula, the pensions increase by 40 percent. This stage was undertaken by law in June 2019, when the PSD [the Social Democratic Party] was in power, and in three months it should have, by a single ministerial order, started this evaluation of all pension files, to be prepared so that after the formula is established under the new law to press a button and pensions to be recalculated. Obviously, this did not happen," Raluca Turcan told private broadcaster B1TV.
The Minister of Labor specified that all pensions in Romania will be recalculated, based on a new pension law, and the actual recalculation stage, which will start after the entry into force of the new legislation, will last between one and two years.
"The process [of recalculation - ed.n.] is laborious and involves several stages: one is the legislative stage, in which we must find a formula that indeed brings equity, contributivity to the pension system and also take into account the special pensions. At the same time, we are talking about approximately 5,000,000 pension files, 4.9 million in payment, and 200,000 files are being paid monthly with the new pensioners. For this, we need approximately 1,000 people employed in the Pension Houses for a fixed period, specialists who will come to work in this process. We further need to buy equipment, software, and the whole process is evaluated by the specialists from the Ministry of Labor to last for two years, I asked them to do this in one year," mentioned Raluca Turcan.
