On Thursday, the Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, approved the state budget for 2025.
In total, 111 MPs voted in favour of the proposed budget, one against, and 16 abstained.
Gintarė Skaistė, a former Finance Minister who drafted the budget, stressed that the changes proposed by the new government are very small.
“It reflects the key priorities that our government had also highlighted – raising people’s incomes, boosting investment, as well as funding defence,” she said.
The new government made minimal adjustments to the state budget for 2025 because its deficit was already at the limit of 3 percent of GDP and promised to adjust it next year.
Last week, the government proposed an increase of almost 42 million euros in the 2025 budget, including 20 million euros for paving gravel roads and 6 million euros for the State Security Department.
In addition, the borrowing limit for defence has been increased by 800 million euros, bringing its financing to 3.5 percent of GDP. This is estimated to bring public debt to 44 percent of GDP by the end of 2025.
According to the Finance Ministry 799.8 million euros will be allocated next year to increase the income of employees, of which 394 million euros will be spent on the salaries of teachers, lecturers, researchers, and other teaching and non-academic staff.
Around 230 million euros will be spent on increasing the salaries of medical staff, and 112.8 million euros on firefighters, police officers, prosecutors, investigators, cultural institutions and the arts, and other public-sector workers.
The budget also foresees 616 million euros for increasing pensions. The 425 million euros earmarked for the indexation of social benefits will increase child benefits, compensation for individual assistance costs, and social assistance benefits.
An extra 6.5 million euros has been allocated for transport concessions next year, as from April 1, all people of retirement age will pay less for long-distance buses and trains.
In 2025, the state budget will raise 17.98 billion euros in revenue (including EU funds) with expenditure estimated at 23.1 billion euros.
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