Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Medicine, Wages

He told LETA that the working group had agreed to accept the Health Ministry's proposal for a 20 percent increase of salaries annually until 2021.

An agreement had been reached also on other non-material incentives, Keris said. Some of those incentives are incentives that fall into the government's competence, such as tax discounts on employees' meals at medical establishments and health care services to the medics' family members. Other incentives, such as helping the medical personnel with housing and places at nursery schools for their children are in the competence of local governments.

The trade union leader said that, when put together, all those proposals made up "a quite well-considered package" but there were concerns about the availability of the required financing.

The working group is expected to produce its final report containing the proposals on July 27.

As reported, Latvian Health Minister Anda Caksa said that the government would be looking for the ways to raise additional EUR 70 million needed to increase by 20 percent the share of wages in the tariffs for health care services next year.

She said that that the talks with Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis (Greens/Farmers) and Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola (Greens/Farmers) still continued because the sources for this additional financing had not yet been identified.