The executive and legislative authorities will hold a meeting on Sunday to reach a consensus on salary increases and pensions, it has emerged.
The two sides failed to reach an agreement on mechanisms to improve citizens’ standard of living during yesterday’s meeting.
The meeting was chaired by Parliament Speaker Ahmed Al Musallam, Shura Council Chairman Ali Saleh Al Saleh and Finance and National Economy Minister Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa. Ministers and members of financial and economic affairs committees in Shura and Parliament attended.
Sunday’s meeting will also discuss initiatives to finance salary increases in the state’s general budget for the fiscal years 2023-2024.
The officials yesterday agreed to continue joint efforts to reach a consensus on the draft law approving the general budget.
Parliamentary sources revealed that MPs had requested the government to double the cost-of-living allowances for public sector employees, and approve a BD40 increase in pensions to be disbursed during the two years of the budget.
The government expressed reservations about parliamentary requests proposing a BD30 increase for retirees, to be disbursed once during the first year of the budget, and to benefit pensioners whose monthly income does not exceed BD1,500, while excluding the 3pc annual increase, at this stage, as there are no surpluses in the pension funds.
With regard to raising the cost-of-living allowances for government employees, Shura representatives objected to increasing salaries for the 50,000 government employees, while not increasing salaries for the 150,000 private sector employees.
They said raising salaries for only one category would create a kind of inflation in the market which will be borne by the other group that did not benefit from the welfare initiatives.
Also, the Shura Council stressed the importance of not increasing the budget deficit and commitment to the fiscal balance programme, calling on the government and Parliament to look for financing any increases through budget reclassification within the allocated budget in order to achieve the desired fiscal stability.
The sources described the upcoming meeting as an opportunity to bring points of view closer.
&uuid=(email))