Who can be employed with the new scheme?

Finance Minister at the Government of Kosovo, Iron Murati, announced the details at a news conference, which he held in Pristina on Monday.

To benefit from this scheme, the family holder must be 18-65 years old, not have any family members employed and be registered as unemployed or employee at the Kosovo Employment Agency (APK).

According to the Government of Kosovo, this scheme comes in the framework of Paco for economic recovery.

This package, worth 420m euros, was approved by the Government of Kosovo last year to help citizens and businesses address losses suffered by the Corleone pandemic.

Businesses employing unemployed family holders will be offered government subsidies.

“The subsidies are up to 300 euros. The salary may be higher, but the subsidy government pays up to 300 euros”, Murati said. Businesses, which want to employ these citizens and benefit from subsidies, must apply to the Employment Offices in their municipalities.

From this category, they cannot employ more than 30 percent of the existing staff.

“If a company has ten workers, it can employ three workers through this measure”, Murati said.

Businesses should be registered and active in the Kosovo Tax Administration, while nongovernmental organisations, which also have interest in employing family holders, should be registered and active in the Kosovo Ministry of Interior Affairs.

Employers are to present to the Employment Office the positions they need, and then the Employment Agency will connect between them and employees.

The application of employers and job seekers for the scheme starts July 18th.

The average gross salary in the private sector in Kosovo is around 380 euros.

Kosovo has faced price increases in products and services by the end of last year, mainly due to supply disorders that have caused the pandemic and the coronary. Prices have increased further, as Russia has launched a war in Ukraine in late February.

According to data from the Kosovo Statistics Agency (ASK), inflation in June of this year has reached 14.1 per cent compared to the same period last year, writes Radio Free Europe.

Over 25 thousand families in social assistance

Minister Murati said the government's “scheme for households” will last as long as necessary.

The amount of how much it will cost Kosovo's budget to implement this scheme did not become clear.

In Kosovo, social assistance currently takes over 250,000 families.

The regular amount they receive is drawn from 60 to 180 euros per month, depending on the number of members.

The family's right to social assistance is under more serious economic conditions, without any employed members.

The World Bank's recent record of poverty in Kosovo is 2017, and according to them, over 23 percent of Kosovo's citizens live in poverty. In the “scheme, the government for families” can also be presented as family with social assistance, but, at the moment of employment, they will be automatically removed from assistance, as the Social Scheme Law predicts.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens, economically inactive

According to the Statistics Agency, unemployment in Kosovo is above 25 percent.

KSF's latest data on the labour market show that out of over one million working-age citizens in Kosovo, over 350,000 are employed, while over 120 thousand are unemployed.

According to the AKS, about 750 thousand citizens are economically inactive, which means they are not employed, nor registered as unemployed, nor are they looking for jobs.