Bulgaria's government, trade unions, and business associations have agreed that retirement pensions should be raised as of January 1, 2013.

On Monday, Bulgaria's so called Council for Tripartite Cooperation shook on several measures, which are supposed to bring about social improvements, including by introducing a mechanism to increase all retirement pensions by a certain percentage depending on the national budget.

However, the nature of this mechanism remains unclear for the time being, and it is unknown how much of a raise pensioners in Bulgaria will get next year.

The government, business, and syndicates also decided that civil servants will also get an unspecified raise as of January 1, 2013, in order to be able to meet the cost of growing social security payments since, as of January 2013, civil servants in Bulgaria will be required to pay for their social security on their own.

What is more, the Tripartite Council agreed that the evasion of social security taxes should be criminalized, and that all social security benefits have to be handled by the Social Aid Agency, rather than the National Social Security Institute.

The Bulgarian government has promised that by April 2012 it will come up with new measures to crack down on the abuse of disability pensions.

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