The government announces a legislative solution which will not be just a payment of pensions.
The government's representatives declined to give more details about the planned pension scheme reform, adding that a task force was working on the matter and that representatives of the HSU political party, employers and trade unions would subsequently be engaged in efforts aimed at elaborating the relevant legislature.
Those who retired after 1 January 1999 receive smaller pensions as the formula for the calculation of their monthly pension sums differs from the formula applied for the calculation of pensions of retirees who went into retirement before.
According to HSU chief Vladimir Jordan, about 320,000 pensioners who have gone into retirement since 1999 are in a more difficult situation and were deprived of 25,000 kuna for those seven years.
Asked by reporters how the government would obtain one to two billion kuna necessary for what Prime Minister Ivo Sanader pledged to pensioners and for what he promised within new positive population policy measures, the government's sources said that the budget's revenues had been on the rise, particularly revenues from tax collection, with a 12-percent increase on the annual level.
They claim that the grey economy shrinks by that percentage annually.
The government's officials also announced a new draft act regulating the work of shops, including their working hours on Sundays.
Under the draft which is being discussed together with trade unions, shops will be open on Sundays in five months: in June, July, August, September and in December.
The government said it would not let the Catholic Church interfere in the process of the adoption of the law. The Church can express its position as a public factor, the sources said.