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Pension fund assets rise to N4.3tn

By on May 29, 2014

The pension fund assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme have risen to N4.3tn, the Chairman, Pension Operators of Nigeria, Mr. Musbau Yola, has said.

He gave the figure on Tuesday while speaking at a media briefing on Nigeria’s preparations for the World Pension Summit scheduled to hold in Abuja from July 7, where over 55 countries had indicated intention to attend.

Yola said that within 10 years of the implementation of the CPS, six million Retirement Savings Accounts had been opened.

He said this was a remarkable progress considering the fact that about 23.9 per cent of Nigerians were currently unemployed and the country was faced with a huge number of people working in the informal sector.

As of March this year, the total number of people having RSAs was 5.98 million, with pension fund assets of N4.13tn.

Speaking on the summit, the Director-General, National Pension Commission, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, said the focus would be on how to reshape the pension industry.

She said the need to reshape the sector became imperative due to the fact that the economy had been rebased thus, providing more opportunities to grow the pension industry.

Anohu-Amazu said, “The focus of this World Pension Summit is on Africa and it will be attended by 55 countries and people will be able to discuss how to reshape the pension industry.

“We have moved and redefined the pension system in Nigeria. Six million RSAs out of 160 million Nigerians are not enough; we have been building the foundation and we have done that right by setting out the basis and format for operators.

“Given the lessons from the past, we don’t want to rush but we want to move in the right direction and that is why we are setting up adequate control mechanisms.”

She expressed optimism that with the support of the summit and with the foundation that PenCom had established, its mandate of developing the industry would be achieved.

She said that the commission had been supporting the states to pass their pension reform bills, noting that this would help to bring more workers into the CPS.

“We also want to create more awareness that the pension reform law is here to stay. The states are also our focus. In the last one year, we have gone round to set up zonal offices and this summit will help us engage most of them,” Anohu-Amazu added.

Speaking on the choice of Nigeria as the host country for the international pension conference, the Co-Founder and Chairman, World Pension Summit, Mr. Eric Eggink, said the success recorded through the Pension Reform Act of 2004 had become a model to other countries.

This, according to him, has been further strengthened by the country’s emergence as the largest economy in Africa with a more diversified economic structure.

“We are holding this in Nigeria because the power of Nigeria is very important in growing the social security system in Africa and also because of the success of the reforms of the pension industry by the Federal Government,” he said.

 

 

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