Filipçe: over 1 billion euros missing for pension payments, budget deficit deepening

The leader of LSDM, Venko Filipçe, has sounded the alarm about the worrying state of the deficit in the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund. He pointed out that the financial hole in this fund has doubled within a two-year period, reaching the figure of one billion euros, which seriously threatens the government’s ability to meet its obligations to pensioners.

Filipçe stated that the amount needed to cover pensions has gone from 500 million to one billion euros in the span of two years. According to him, this one billion euros is missing and the state is forced to secure it. In conditions where the economy is not generating the expected revenues, he asked rhetorically where these funds will be found, providing the answer himself that the only way remains borrowing.

He also warned that the deficit in the state budget is expanding without stopping and that the government is consciously steering the country toward a more severe economic crisis, relying solely on costly loans to pay off its own obligations.

Furthermore, Filipçe explained that these expensive loans are not being used to spur any economic development, but simply to plug holes in the budget and to finance salaries and pensions. He compared this situation to a downward spiral that is deepening more and more and warned that the country risks facing an economic catastrophe similar to the one Greece experienced several decades ago. According to him, this outcome is already inevitable and is constantly warned about by economic experts.

In this bleak panorama, Filipçe stressed that the isolationist orientation of the current government is further deepening economic risks. According to him, distancing from the path of European integration will drastically reduce the opportunities for obtaining funds from the European Union in the future.