Moldovan finance minister says law on single wage payment system guarantees nobody to have salary lower than 2,000 lei, nobody to have lower salary

Chisinau, 9 November /MOLDPRES/ - The law on the single wage payment system in the budgetary system guarantees that nobody will have a salary lower than the subsistence minimum of 2,000 lei and nobody will have lower salaries. At the same time, the difference between the first level of wage payment and the last one will be of only 15 stages and not 33, as it is at present. Finance Minister Octavian Armasu made statements to this effect at a today’s meeting of the government’s press club.

According to the Finance Ministry, if the current wage payment system was preserved, in the budgetary system, the average salary would have increased from an average of 6,517 lei per month in 2018 to 6,826 lei in 2021. The law on the single wage payment system allows an increase from 6,517 lei in 2018 to 8,519 lei in 2021.   

For 2019, decision-makers establish a reference wage of 1,500 lei, to which the increases for performance and the specific increase are added. If the employee has an average monthly salary lower than 2,000 lei, he/she will receive compensation, the minister said. According to Armasu, in the next two years, the reference salary will grow by at least 200 lei annually. The spending for wage payment will fit the budget’s funds.  

The law does not allow decreasing the reference level, which is a guarantee for everybody that the wages will not be diminished each year. Minister Armasu also said that “the right acquired” would be observed and if the average monthly salary drops, compensation will be paid.”

„There are big inequities in the present wage payment system, big discrepancies between the incomes of various categories of employees. There are different mechanisms of formation of the salary and there are several laws which govern this sector,” the minister noted. As a result, the difference between the salaries is pretty large; the highest salary is of 35,880 lei per month and the lowest one is of 1,200 lei.  

„We are set to diminish this difference between the highest and the lowest salaries. Obviously, those having lower salaries will take advantage from this; yet, we should tend to other standards. According to the International Labour Organization, the ratio recommended must be of 12 to 1. Under this law, we tend to reach a ratio of 15 to 1,” Armasu said.     

The new law sees a flexible wage payment system. The ministry establishes a grid which has 130 wage payment grades and by one coefficient is assigned to these grades, which is multiplied with the reference value and the salary for the concerned wage payment grade is got. In this way, by changing the reference salary, we change the salary at all the grid.   

The cabinet approved the draft law on the single wage payment system in the budgetary sector on 8 November. The new law regulates the structure of the wage payment system, salary rights, way the wage is established – employees will be remunerated based on the grading system, made up of grades and stages of wage payment. The concept of the reform stipulates that the salary will be made up of the fixed part and the variable part. The variable part will depend on the performances of the employee and the aspects specific of the work.  

The salaries will be increased for the budgetary employees of all sectors, including education, health, social assistance. The cost of the draft’s implementation for 2019-2021 is of 3.9 billion lei. By 2021, the average monthly salary for the employees of the institutions financed from the state budget is scheduled to increase by about 30 per cent and for those financed from local budgets – by 55 per cent.

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor A. Raileanu)