Greece to increase the minimum wages for consumers, PM says

On Thursday, January 13, 2022, Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, declared that their government would raise the minimum wage for a second time later this year. The reason has been stated by the Prime Minister, and he asserted that the pandemic and various other tragedies lead to hassling economic growth and decrease the income of the common people.

He further mentioned that the rising inflation has harshly impacted the consumer’s income and survival, which makes it difficult for them to run their livelihood.

In the new provisions announced by the government, the monthly wages of the consumers have been increased by about 2 percent to their previous income. So, the growth in income will be stated that they will get 663 euros from this month of January.

As per the information given by the expert that the increase in the wages for the second time will be implemented from May 1, 2022.

While presenting data, Mitsotakis urged,” I evaluate that their government will be doing a significant rise by increasing minimum wages, and it will be much higher than the 2 percent rise”.

The data from Greece’s stataics service ELSTAT also showed that the global energy cost, which is highly surging international energy cost and was the main key factor that has driven the inflation to 5.1 percent in December 2021, and notable, it was the highest level of inflation in the 11 years.

Moreover, to help households and businesses in the tough times, the government of Greece have also increased the subsidies and presented around 1.35 billion euros ($1.55 billion) with the bills such as rising power and gas bills since September.

Earlier, Last Week, the government had also extended the financial relief to the consumers till January at an additional cost of around 400 million euros.

Furthermore, the country has extended constraints at public spaces such as restaurants and bars for a week as the country is witnessing the surge of a new strain of COVID-19 called Omicron.

On Thursday, Greece has reported a total of 50,126 persons exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic.