Budget, Financial Services, Latvia, Medicine

Even though the outgoing government may not make any decision regarding allocations of financing for next and coming years, the Health Ministry’s report is on the government’s agenda for its meeting on November 27.

In line with the report, EUR 103.6 mln are needed to increase medics’ wages by 20% on average next year.

The ministry underscored that increase of wages is necessary because of the staff shortage in the Latvian health care sector. The ministry said that shortage of workload currently is 1,984 workloads, and it os expected that in 2019 it will grow by 9.7%.

As reported, Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis (Greens/Farmers) said that due to the delayed process of formation of the new government, the next year’s budget will not be adopted in due term.

The Finance Ministry proposes amending the law by scrapping the provision that in case of a failure to adopt next year’s budget, the monthly expenditure of next year’s budget cannot exceed one 12th of the previous year’s appropriation. Instead, the ministry proposes to stipulate that next year’s budget expenditure cannot exceed the expenditure planned for the respective year in the medium-term budget framework.

The draft amendments are expected to resolve a number of issues, like ensuring the planned pension hikes, as well as pay raises for teachers, medics, judges and prosecutor in accordance with the Constitutional Court’s ruling.