Cooks, educators and police officers will receive salaries up to 37%. Tofan announces how much the salary reform will cost

The salary reform, which the Government will implement starting next year, will bring important benefits for several categories of employees. According to Prime Minister Vasile Tofan, the salaries of employees in the public sector will increase from January 1, 2027, and some categories are expected to benefit from increases of over 30%. Tofan says that a cook from a rural locality could receive a salary 37% higher, a kindergarten teacher – by 31%, and a police officer with five years of experience – by 25%. The Head of Government acknowledged that the reform involves spending billions of lei and that the authorities are trying to find a balance between increasing salaries, compensating for energy bills and reducing the budget deficit.

The Prime Minister stated that salary increases are one of the Government's priorities, even though the Republic of Moldova is facing financial difficulties and the need to allocate significant amounts for heating compensation.

"This winter, perhaps more than ever, we still have to be there and find these two, three and five, six billion to give these compensations. More than ever, it is important to move forward with the salary reform. On January 1, salaries in the public sector will increase for a cook working in a village, the salary will increase by 37 percent, for a kindergarten teacher it will increase by 31%, for a police officer it will increase by 25 percent, with 5 years of seniority, for a nurse it will increase by 23 percent. Yes, these are good things, but the cost for us is 5.5 billion," the prime minister declared in the podcast "La raport", moderated by Nicolae Chicu.

The reform does not involve the same percentage increase for all employees. The increases will be differentiated depending on the field of activity, position and seniority, and the Government is particularly aiming to improve the incomes of people with low salaries.

Tofan explained that, to finance these expenses, the authorities have also prepared a fiscal reform. This aims to reduce the tax burden on labor and investments, while increasing taxes on certain products and activities, such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.

"That's why we have to do tax reform, but we still didn't want to do tax reform in a way where we simply raise taxes to take from here and give there. So we wanted to change the emphasis in our tax reform. That's why we still tried to lower taxes on labor, lower taxes on investments. But let's raise them on alcohol, let's raise them on tobacco. Tobacco will also bring alcohol there, almost a billion in taxes, on gambling that will bring us a billion in taxes. That was kind of the logic."

The Prime Minister stated that the ministries' financial requests for next year considerably exceed available resources and that the Executive will have to reduce certain expenses in order to finance priorities.