Posted by Prince Cookey on
The new pension scheme has generated N60 billion from civil servants in the federal service from July 2004 to date, signifying that.....
The new pension scheme has generated N60 billion from civil servants in the federal service from July 2004 to date, signifying that the scheme will likely create a large pool of long-term funds for economic and social development of the country.
Mr. Mohammad K. Ahmad, director-general of National Pension Commission (PenCom) confirmed this in an interview last week.
This high level of pension contribution within just two years in the public sector (July 2004 to June 2006) shows that the scheme is bound to be a resounding success if the fund managers invest the pension contributions prudently.
Mr. Wale Kolawole, managing director and chief executive, NLPC Pension Funds Administrators Limited, said the public service has been religiously contributing what it ought to pay in respect of the new pension scheme.
Kolawole said the process of getting the N60 billion (currently warehoused at Central Bank of Nigeria) released to pension fund custodians is on and is being done in batches with three batches already released. The fourth batch, according to him, is now being expected.
"In the private sector, it will not be easy to give a cogent figure of the accumulated funds so far since it is not coming from one source", he said. "The processes are still on. By the end of June 2006, we got quite a number of contributors from the private sector and the figures for July are expected to be more than that of June. As such, it is difficult to mention a particular figure of contributed funds unlike what obtains in the public sector."
The NLPC PFA chief executive explained that with time, the system will be stabilised so that both operators and contributors will be able to know the exact figures of accumulated funds in the pension system.
He added however, that the response to the scheme has been encouraging considering that the scheme is a new initiative.
"Moving forward from the licensing position, I would like to say that a lot of interest has been generated on the new pension scheme and quite a number of organisations that were hitherto not interested, are realising that whether they like it or not, they have to be part of the process. In terms of post-licensing activities, I would say that it has been encouraging and the response has been very positive."
Kolawole said the covering of pensions in the private sector was limited in the past, which was less than three per cent, but with the new regime, operators are perfecting strategies on how to bring companies into the scheme.