Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu provided clarifications on Tuesday regarding the increase up to 3,000 lei of the threshold for taxing pensions.
He stated that he had also spoken with the Minister of Labor and had a meeting with the Minister of Finance, emphasizing that the measure will be approved by Emergency Ordinance.
”That threshold of approximately 800,000 people was exceeded. I also spoke with the Minister and had a meeting with the Minister of Finance. (...) Either we granted an exemption for those 800,000, but the increase was not uniform (...) there were even larger increases and so, I believe this approach is correct, raising the threshold up to 3,000 lei for taxation. We are monitoring the price and cost dynamics, and my duty is to maintain the same standard of living growth, if not more,” stated Marcel Ciolacu.
The Head of the Executive specified that ”it is not a very large budgetary effort, around 800 million lei.
”We estimated the implementation costs for recalculations. We need to make a distinction between a reform. We came with a recalculation, a reform instrument, for 4.7 million Romanians. It was normal to have a percentage of 0.5 or 1%. I am glad that we still managed to stay within a reasonable limit.
Pension increases are aligned with the inflation index and the economic growth index at the beginning of the year. The recalculation had a different purpose, primarily, there were many people with many years of work and very low pensions. Parameters have changed, trying to actually address the injustices, following a succession of laws,” added Ciolacu.
Regarding the controversies surrounding the pension recalculations, Marcel Ciolacu stated that he and the Cabinet members have taken on this reform together.
”It was expected to lead to discussions, but we have sustainability from now on,” emphasized the Head of the Executive. ”The monthly pension budget is 10.3 billion. We estimated that for the remaining months of the year, for this quarter, we would have expenses of 10 billion.
At this moment, as the figures show, there are expenses of 8.3 billion, for all four months. In other words, we are within the budget even with this increase of the taxation threshold up to 3,000 lei. In other words, it is budgeted,” Ciolacu further stated.
Minister of Labor, Simona Bucura-Oprescu, stated on Monday evening that starting from October 1, 2024, the threshold for taxing pensions will substantially increase, from the current 2,000 lei to 3,000 lei.
This decision comes during a period with many tensions caused by the distribution of decisions with the new pension values following their recalculations.
For example, the visually impaired have seen pension cuts of 60-80% and have announced protests and legal actions. In Alba, it's total chaos, mailmen are taking back recalculations from pensioners. And some pensioners have received decisions with a recalculated pension of 1 leu.