The Minister of Economy and Innovation, Delina Ibrahimaj, in a video shared on social networks announced that the doubling of the monthly bonus will affect all categories of pensioners and that in addition, the indexation of pensions will also continue.
According to the minister, 22.4 billion more lek have been foreseen in the budget to finance this support, while the objective by 2030 is for the full pension to reach no less than 40 thousand lek and the partial pension to reach no less than 22 thousand lek.
"This is a concrete commitment to increase, step by step, the income of pensioners until 2030," said Ibrahimaj, while the concept of the monthly bonus was applied for the first time during 2026 to mitigate the consequences of price increases and ranges from 600 to 1,800 lek per month according to the pension category.
It is not the first time that the Rama government has granted bonuses to pensioners on the eve of elections, causing criticism for using public finances to influence voters.
This promise is also viewed with concern as an attempt to influence the 2027 electoral campaign.
"This is a government decision that corresponds precisely to the four-month period before the elections," Rigels Xhemollari from the organization Qëndresa Qytetare told BIRN.
"The government throws the increase due to inflation or the deserved increase as electoral spoils to a large contingent of citizens, such as pensioners, who, in great vital needs, fall prey to this electoral bait," he added.
A few months before the 2025 parliamentary elections, the government announced the distribution of two bonuses worth between 10,000 and 15,000 lek to around 730,000 pensioners, at a cost of 163 million euros, a decision that was criticized as an attempt to orient the vote of one of the largest categories of voters in the country.
In its observation reports, the OSCE-ODIHR has repeatedly raised concerns about the use of public resources for electoral purposes. /Reporter.al
