The Prime Minister of Albania, at the same time the chairman of the Socialist Party, Edi Rama declared today that the fight against informality will rise to a new level, in the name of pensioners and for pensioners.

In his speech at the National Assembly of the SP in Durrës, Rama said that, "for the pensioners, we have done as much as we could, never as much as we wanted and at least we have never been lied to that we have done enough".

Rama added that, "Pensions are the most challenging part of the economic transformation that we are bringing about. Pensioners know how to appreciate our work for Albania better than anyone else, that's why they voted for us faithfully in the majority in all our election battles".

"The second week of next month we will start, not only to share with pensioners an overview of our data and ideas for increasing pensions, on the way to Albania 2030, but we will also start informing about the implementation of a plan national for guaranteeing social security. This plan, which has been being worked on for months by a group of institutions and experts under the direction of MEKI, will aim precisely at the inclusion of pensioners in the sharing of the income of economic growth, to go beyond the current level of the end-of-year bonus and indexation of annual pensions", said Rama.

The Prime Minister stated that, "the increase in income from the state for pensioners in the following years cannot be significant if we do not give a significant blow to the disgusting phenomenon of concealing real wages, which as a result directly hit the income for social security and steal what belongs to pensioners".

This means, said Rama, "that we will do with the social security quotas what we did with the electricity bills and we will treat those who do not pay the employees social security according to their real salary like thieves of electricity".

"Today, we are the country with the lowest taxes and social and health insurance in the region. There is no country in the Western Balkans that I am not going to Europe because it is pointless to enter into comparisons, where small business has zero profit tax and zero VAT. There is no country in our region that has a tourism VAT of 6% and the declared salaries in the tourism industry are often more than half of the real salaries. There is no country in the region with the income we have from the construction sector in relation to the GDP and the declared wages of the construction sector are so lower than ours compared to the real wages," said Rama.

The Prime Minister said that this phenomenon extends more or less to the entire private sector and the time has come for the fight against it to rise to a new level, not in the name of informality, but in the name of pensioners, for pensioners.

"We are not talking about raising taxes here, because we will keep the small business tax zero until 2029, as we promised several years ago, but on the other hand we will significantly tighten the circle of businesses that make more than 140 euros turnover per year and are camouflaged as a small business by hiding the real income and together with hiding the real income by keeping what should go to the pensioners' pockets", said Rama.

"Meanwhile, big business must be very clear that if they do not want an increase in the tax on the nominated profit for pensioners, they must pay every penny that belongs to pensioners and the sick, of course," said Rama.

"While the pensioners themselves should know and will see concretely in our commitment and actions that on the one hand the frontal fight against the informality of salaries for private sector employees will be all-out and on the other hand we will start to increase the bonus for as early as this end of the year", said Rama./ATSH