Pensioners are not able to benefit from full payments, they do not complete their working years

Official data show that from year to year new retirees fail to meet the criterion of working years.

Last year, people who retired had worked with insurance for an average of 28 years, or 7 years less than the legal criterion of 35 years for full retirement.

According to experts at the Institute of Social Security, the lack of working years by the new generations of retirees is a reflection of transition issues, such as immigration and informality in the labor market.

In recent years, the number of immigrants receiving pensions has increased. Since most of them left in the first decade of the transition, they only manage to meet the conditions for benefiting from the minimum pension with 15 insured years.

Also, a large part of those who live in Albania do not manage to fulfill the legal requirement for a full pension, because they often worked informally and did not regularly pay social insurance.

For these reasons, the new old age pensions are decreasing year after year. The official data of the Social Insurance Institute show that the average payment for new pensions that were connected in 2021 was 14,652 ALL, down 2.5% compared to 2020.

Since the application of the reform, the average contribution period for the new old-age pensions has fallen significantly. For example, in 2015, pensioners who retired that year had paid contributions for approximately 32.3 years of work, while those who retired in 2020 paid contributions for 29.4 years of work, according to official data from the Institute of Social Security. In the span of five years, the average contributory age for the new pensions has dropped by almost 5 years.

In order to benefit from a full old-age pension according to the Insurance Law, no less than 35 years of insurance are required, for persons whose right to pension was born until December 31, 2014. This pension cannot be less than 13,753 ALL per month , while the maximum pension cannot be more than twice the minimum pension or ALL 27,506.

Meanwhile, for certain pensions with a starting date from January 1, 2015 onwards, the minimum income (which means an insurance period of no less than 15 years, according to the new pension calculation formula), cannot be less that the amount of the social pension, which is currently 7465 ALL per month, while the maximum income depends on the salary and the extension of the insurance period, and as a result there is no limit on their amount./Monitor.al

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