The pension in Greece is set to increase next year for the first time in over a decade.
"2023 is the year of increasing pensions for the first time, after 12 years," Deputy Labour and Social Affairs Minister Panos Tsakloglou said in an interview with AMNA on Sunday, noting that the government has supported the income of pensioners in several ways.
Tsakloglou also referred to the challenges he was called to face when he took over the position of Deputy Labour and Social Affairs Minister and focused on the emblematic reform, as he described it.
This is in the architecture of the public social security system with the introduction of capital supplementary insurance.
He said this "aims to reduce the exposure of the social security system to the demographic aging of the population, to the increase of savings, which will be invested significantly in the Greek economy, enhancing growth, providing disincentives for uninsured work and providing higher pensions to future generations."
At the same time, Development and Investments Minister43 said that the government is examining the possibility of extending the fuel pass, in an interview on Friday with RealFM.
Commenting on fuel prices, he underlined that "the situation regarding fuel is very, very difficult and this is the reality."
"As development and investments ministry we have launched the largest investigation we can in the refineries and we are expecting the results by May 23 in order for the agency to be able to evaluate them.
"We are also carrying out urgent inspections on the 30 gas stations with the highest prices in Greece and we are doing the same thing with the transport companies. So, our agency is now checking the entire fuel supply chain.
"Everything we are doing, we are rightly doing and with the greatest possible strictness in order to contain any further hike in prices.
"This does not mean that we will not have high prices for fuel. The price of fuel is increasing for objective reasons.
"It is because there is simultaneously a hike in crude oil prices, a drop in the value of the euro relative to the dollar and a lack of petrol because Russian refineries are not exporting."
Elsewhere, the Greek unemployment rate eased to 12.2% of the workforce in March from 12.7% in February and 16.8% in March 2021, Hellenic Statistical Authority said.
More specifically, the number of unemployed people totaled 582,001 in March, down 21.2% from March 2021 and down 4.2% from February 2022.
The unemployment rate among women was 15.8% (22.5% in March 2021) and among men it fell to 9.2% from 12.2%.
In the 15-24 age group, the unemployment rate dropped to 26.4% from 40.7% in March last year, while in the 25-74 age group the unemployment rate fell to 11.5% from 15.5%, respectively. The number of employed people totaled 4,187,657 in March, up 14.3% from March 2021 and up 0.4% from February 2022.
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