Minimum Wages on the rise in Romania
The minimum salary in Romania will increase by 10% up to 3300 RON
Ştefan Stoica, 29.09.2023, 13:50
As announced while the government was assuming responsibility for a new series of fiscal-budgetary laws, minimum salaries in Romania are to be raised by 10%, from 3,000 to 3300 RON, the equivalent of 660 euros. The beneficiaries of the new measures are over 1.8 million employees working mainly in transport, trade and SMEs.
The aforementioned pay raise is aimed at protecting the income of every employee, at the same time boosting employment, the purchase power and curbing illegal work. Other social categories in the low income bracket, such as the handicapped and those involved with various independent activities and intellectual property rights, are to also benefit the new measure.
This government will not give up on the priority of raising the minimum salary and we would like to have another raise in 2024, which we are going to discuss with social partners, the head of the Romanian Executive, Marcel Ciolacu has said. The Romanian official has also insisted that no minimum wages are to decrease in Romania upon the enforcement of the new fiscal-budgetary law package for which the government has assumed responsibility before Parliament. For this reason the Executive decided to scrap the draft ordinance on raising the minimum salaries in the construction sector as these salaries would have decreased upon the introduction of the health insurance contributions. As a result, employees in constructions, agriculture and food industry will have their salaries unchanged as they dont have to pay health contributions.
Marcel Ciolacu:” According to the calculations the Finance Ministry presented on Thursday, upon the introduction of health insurance contributions for all employees, the minimum net salary in constructions, agriculture and food industry could have dropped. We have all, and especially I, pledged that such a thing is not going to happen as this is something I do not agree with. No minimum net pay was supposed to be trimmed, so we decided to cancel this ordinance to prevent this from happening. The field ministries are to revise the text and until then all the wages in the aforementioned fields, constructions, agriculture and food industry will remain unchanged as the employees there are exempted from paying health insurance contributions.”
The government initially wanted to raise the minimum gross wages in constructions from 4,000 to 4,500 lei, the equivalent of roughly 900 euros, but the National Trade Union Block proposed that the gross wages in constructions be raised to 46 hundred lei and in agriculture to 35 hundred lei. The new form of the aforementioned ordinance might be high on the agenda of the new round of talks the government is going to have next week. Time enough for the Finance Ministry to recalculate the money involved.
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