Algeria: Salaries’ hikes engulfed half of 2010 budget

Reliable sources told Echorouk that the salaries’ increases recently enforced by the government to address the pressing concerns of the working class in Algeria had engulfed overt half of the 2010 budget.

• Reliable sources told Echorouk that the salaries’ increases recently enforced by the government to address the pressing concerns of the working class in Algeria had engulfed over half of the 2010 budget.

• This was estimated at 53.27 per cent of all extra expenses made from the 2010 operating budget.

• The state budget also sustained more expenditure as a result of the financial needs, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dinars, expressed by several sectors of activity including the ministry of trade which had to prop up last year the subsidies for basic food commodities like bread, sugar and edible oil.
• The national education ministry also needed an extra financial package from the relevant authorities in charge of the state budget in order to face up to the long-overdue salary hikes demanded by teachers and workers of the education sector as a whole after a string of widespread strike actions.
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• According to recent statistics, the country’s economic growth rate reached 3.3 per cent during the same period.