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Budget payments for baby bonus are increasing, but births fell by 22% from 2029 to 2023

2024-03-12 07:21:00, Ekonomi CNA

Budget payments for baby bonus are increasing, but births fell by 22% from 2029

Babies born in 2023 fell by around 10 per cent compared to 2022, but baby bonus payments rose.

During the last year, 3.3 billion lek, about 31 million euros, were paid from the state budget as a bonus for babies born in Albania. This happened despite the fact that 2,478 fewer babies were born last year than in 2022 and also that the government passed a legal initiative that limits payments for births abroad.

The baby bonus of more than 40 percent of its value has gone to babies born abroad, despite the fact that the government intended this financial tool to improve births within the country. From 2019 to the end of 2023, the government paid over 141 million euros in the form of a baby bonus, but on the other hand, the number of births in the same period fell by 22%.

At the end of December of last year, the Council of Ministers approved a condition, in which the bonus is benefited by parents of babies who had 180 days in Albania in the previous year. These data will be obtained from the TIMS system.

The government also decided that the bonus should be benefited by foreigners who have settled in Albania as asylum seekers or refugees who decide that their child's citizenship should be Albanian.

The decision related to the baby bonus was changed aiming for the benefits to be for citizens living inside the country, since over the years Albanian immigrants living abroad had also benefited from this legal space. For the government this was a double benefit as they benefit from the schemes in the countries where they are deployed.

The total number of beneficiary babies according to the Monitoring data of the Ministry of Health is for 161,943 newborns. Based on the number of births for the years 2019-2022, according to INSTAT data, it is 108,535 births, which means that 33% or 53,408 bonus beneficiary babies live abroad.

In 2019, the government started applying the baby bonus, which has a financial benefit of 40,000 ALL for the first child, 80,000 ALL for the second and 120,000 ALL for the third and subsequent babies as a policy to increase fertility. , but so far the scheme has not been effective./ Monitor magazine