Prime Minister Edi Rama stated that economic growth beyond expectations has enabled the government to adopt a new package of support measures for citizens, through the 2026 Budget Normative Act.
" The highlight of the week was, without a doubt, the June normative act, where once again the economy, which is growing beyond expectations, bringing in revenues beyond expectations, gave us the opportunity to come up with a series of measures in direct service to the people and in respect of all those who rightly demand even more from the government and from society, through the government.
We approved a bonus for pensioners. A reminder here, because we need to remember something from time to time, even though our memory is getting shorter and shorter and there are more and more people who don't want to know where they come from. But Churchill said it beautifully that "he who forgets where he comes from has no idea where he is going". The reminder is that last year the spring bonus for pensioners was announced, which had the same logic, namely the growth of the economy and the principle that, at the moment when the economy grows and we manage to fulfill what we have foreseen and we have something left, what is left should be shared with those who need it most and pensioners are the first and foremost. "They did it for the campaign", they said. No. We don't have any campaign. The next campaign is in 2029. So the retirees received another bonus, which also included every penny benefitted from the unnatural increase in oil prices, as a result of the war crisis between the United States, Israel, and Iran and what happened in the Strait of Hormuz.
So, we did not put a single penny of the extra oil taxes into the budget, but gave them to pensioners. Likewise, we made another 15 million euros available to cancer patients for their medications and we also decided to increase the salaries of emergency doctors. True heroes! We decided to increase the sovereign guarantee for the national program that will start soon, to double the number of enterprises. We decided to double the support for people with disabilities.
"We decided to double the support for children with special needs. I remember that last year, thanks to a mistake I made, for which I apologized, the issue of autistic children became a problem. I pledged in that campaign that we would double the support for them and we did. Just as we gave the caregivers of people with disabilities or children with special needs the support they had been asking for for a long time, not to mention the other parts that went towards rural and urban development," said Rama.