Personal finance

Bulgaria's Parliament decided on 21st of June to increase the minimum retirement pension to 180 BGN (90 Euro) as of 1st of July and to 200 BGN (100 Euro) as of 1st of October 2017.

The decision was adopted unanimously at first reading, with 187 MPs voting in favour. The bill has been submitted by the Council of Ministers.

Greece sold 1.3 billion euros ($1.46 billion) of three-month T-bills to refinance a maturing issue, the country's debt agency PDMA said on Wednesday.

The three-month paper was sold at a yield of 2.70 percent, unchanged from a previous sale earlier this month. The amount raised included 300 million euros in non-competitive bids.

The Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Biser Petkov, informed on 8th of June in the Council of Ministers that the government approved the draft amendments to the State Social Security Budget Act and will be submitted to the National Assembly.

The government has offered indirect financing to the Single Social Security Entity (EFKA) in the first four months of its operation so that the fund can cover its obligations.

Social security contributions are starting to make little financial sense, given that no long-term investment of 100,000 euros would be considered even vaguely attractive if it took 32-34 years to get amortized.

As things stand now, Greek workers would need to live to be 101 to get back the amount of contributions they paid over their working life.

In 2010, Neena Nagpal and her husband spent their life savings on a flat outside Delhi that was never built. Now, a new law seeks to protect thousands of home buyers like her from unscrupulous property developers.

Greece sold 1.138 billion euros ($1.24 billion) of six-month T-bills to refinance a maturing issue, the country's debt agency PDMA said on Wednesday.

The debt agency sold six-month paper at a yield of 2.97 percent, unchanged from a previous sale in April. The amount raised included 262.5 million euros in non-competitive bids.

Slovenia's Parliament adopted amendments to the Pension and Disability Insurance Act, according to which pensioners who meet all requirements would have a guaranteed pension of EUR 500, BNR reported.

The act aims at making the minimum pension in that country EUR 500 per month, so that poor pensioners do not have to ask the state for additional assistance.

The draft memorandums of understanding submitted to the Finance Ministry on Monday by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund provide for the possibility of cuts to supplementary pensions from 2019, the lifting of regulations on Sunday trading, the abolition of the Labor Ministry's veto on group layoffs and the extension of the collective labor negotiations' suspension until

The Labor Ministry's main plan to save 1 percent of gross domestic product from 2019 pension expenditure provides for reductions even to very low pensions if the recalculation process shows a difference from the original calculation according to the previous method, the so-called "personal difference."