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| At the entrance of the "Mother Teresa" University Hospital Center, Tirana, December, 2021 |
The budget for the next year will be 737.4 billion lek, 1.4 billion more than initially projected. This comes as the Ministry of Finance and Economy plans to collect even more funds, 676 billion lek compared to the 674.7 initially believed when drafting the 2024 budget.
After discussions in parliamentary committees, Finance altered the funds available for some key institutions in the country, decisions that were voted on item by item and in full in Parliament, local media reports.
Following very weak results in the PISA test, the budget for the Ministry of Education and Sports will increase to 78.8 billion lek, 26.6 billion more than initially anticipated.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection will have less money available to spend. The budget for this institution "shrinks" by 6 billion lek.
In just 7 minutes, socialist lawmakers also approved changes to pension scheme budgets, personnel expenses, and public investments.
After approval item by item and in full, the draft budget and the accompanying fiscal package will be sent for presidential decree. After approval there, the two most important finance laws of the country will become applicable from the beginning of next year.
It should be emphasized that Albanian healthcare is among the worst in Europe and beyond, mainly due to low salaries and poor structural policies to encourage doctors to stay in Albania after graduation. However, in reality, the opposite has been happening in recent years, where more and more doctors want to leave Albania for a better life. Corruption in public hospitals is at very high levels according to many indicators. There are numerous diseases that cannot be treated in Albanian hospitals, and even those that are treated, are not treated as they should be.