As the 15th Saeima elections approach, debates between representatives of political forces are taking place viturally non-stop across various Latvian media outlets. "Re:Baltica"'s fact-checking project "Re:Check" investigated misleading statements made by politicians in them.

Last week, Latvian Public Media (LSM) asked participants in a debate a question about the number of employees in ministries. The answers were varied, but Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs (United List) correctly indicated that there are a total of 3,500 people working in ministries. Then Kulbergs supplemented his answer:

"Three and a half thousand, just so people know, that's two billion euros. If you were to fire absolutely all employees working in the state administration, that's the maximum, if you fired everyone."

A moment later, he said the same thing again and also wrote on social media "X" after the debate: "the entire state apparatus, 3,500 employees, costs two billion euros."

However, the prime minister is wrong in this regard. This year, 1.97 billion euros is the amount allocated in Latvia's basic budget for the remuneration of employees of all state budget institutions in general, not just employees of ministries.

State budget institutions also employ, for example, firefighters, police officers, doctors, judges and soldiers. And in total, they number almost 60 thousand people. In turn, 3.5 thousand work in ministries and, according to "Re:Check", approximately 133 million euros are planned...

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