Press conference by Prime Minister Edi Rama after regular cabinet meeting on new wage reform:

PM Edi Rama: Good afternoon!

I appeared at this press conference today because this is one of the landmark days for the government I head. We just agreed on the new wage reform bill and we have set down in black and white that the average monthly wage in the Republic of Albania will increase to 900 euros from 563 euros currently.

This is the outcome of all efforts, reforms and the work we have done up to this day in a bid to create this opportunity for our common house, so that we can afford redistributing revenue precisely where the ordinary Albanian families rightly expect more than anything else to end up in their coffers. It is very important for us to ascertain today how stable our economy is and that we have actually ushered in a new stage of its development, despite all the challenges, obstacles and extraordinary blows that Albania has received and the Albanians have received in the wake of several consecutive crises.

We have succeeded, not only to withstand, not only to heal the wounds and tackle serious problems, but as we speak we also continue to support all households and small businesses so that they face no electricity price increase even by a single cent in their monthly utility bills and today we can openly tell everyone that time is high for them to directly receive in their household coffers the fruits of all this effort and the reforms that have brought us up here.

I don’t want to lose attention by focusing on too much data and figures. I am here together with the Finance Minister. I would like to congratulate and appreciate her team for the hard work they have done. We have been engaged in endless discussions, we have had endless debates, we have confronted endless volumes of ciphers, options, schemes and in the end we have all agreed that it is our duty to distribute to Albanians the maximum of the reform results and it is with great pleasure that I announce today that the lowest-ranking public administration employee in the central administration will receive an average monthly wage of 81,000 lek, up from a current pay of 49,000 lek. It is with special pleasure that I tell high school teachers today that their monthly salary will increase to over 100,000 lek, the salary of primary school teachers across the country will grow to over 95,000 lek from a current rate of 74,000 lek. This is about the basic wages, because they will receive even higher pays based on their work seniority and their qualifications.

Time is also high for the university lecturers to receive a significant pay rise by around 20%, a decision that would allow them to increase their salaries up to 30% under the university autonomy, just like it was the case last year.

It is also with great pleasure that I can tell nurses today that their basic monthly salary will edge up to 87,000 lek and even higher than 90,000 lek a month, based on the job position and work seniority.

We significantly increase wages of the Armed Forces members and we have decided to increase their wages again, including all workers in the entire security system. And we will keep raising their wages. As I had already promised, we have increased wages of the firefighters as they are increasingly more important for the society given that blazes and forest fires are increasingly present due to the climate changes and not only, and firefighters will receive increased wages up to 80,000 lek per month.

The pay rise process will take place in two stages. An initial immediate step will be taken to increase the wages for teachers, security system employees, doctors, nurses and health professionals and such an initial step will be taken for everyone else once parliament passes the draft law on the new wage system reform that the government approved today and a second step will be taken next April, when we will complete the entire framework of the wages reform, when the average monthly wages will proudly increase to 900 euros.