After backing away from a pledge to consider lowering a 24 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) on food, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said civil servants will get pay hikes and tax cuts.

That’s under a Finance Ministry bill that will affect 650,000 public workers, said the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency AMNA although he didn’t say how it would be paid for.

He spoke in Parliament and said the effect would be to give the workers the equivalent of an extra month’s pay each year after austerity measures demanded by international lenders wiped out two months’ bonuses.

Over the opposition of the major rival SYRIZA and the center-left PASOK-KINAL, the measure would, he said, support families, vulnerable households and the young.

The plan would raise the tax-free cap by 1,000 euros ($1,108) per child, benefiting 1.34 million families, it was said, many struggling to deal with high food prices despite a “Household Basket” program supermarkets set up to hold down prices on 51 basic items at the government’s request.

He said the measures mean no taxes on 22-100 euros ($24.37-$110.77) per month for 3 million families using the Market Pass, a subsidy he said would continue without saying why the VAT wasn’t lowered instead.

The bill includes measures budgeted at 1.1 billion euros ($1.22 million) annually and covers half of the government’s four-year plan of 9.1 billion euros ($10.08 million,) he added.