By Bisi Bamishe
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has disclosed that the acumulated pension fund assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) rose to N12.66 trillion as at 30 June 2021.
Director-General, PenCom, Aisha Dahir-Umar made this known in her welcome remarks at the 2021 Journalists’ workshop tagged ‘Positioning the Pension Industry In The Post Covid Era’, organised by the Commission in Lagos.
According to her, the number of registered contributors under the CPS has grown to 9.38 million during the period.
The DG who was represented by the Head, Corporate Communications in the commission Mr Peter Aghahowa equally hinted that the President Muhammadu Buhari, has approved the payment of 2.5 percent differential in the rate of employer pension contribution for FGN retirees and employees.
This, according to her resulted from the increase in the minimum pension contribution for employers from 7.5 percent to 10 percent, in line with Section 4 (1) of the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014.
She added that those payments would undoubtedly, boost the RSA balances of the beneficiaries towards better retirement benefits. The settlement of these outstanding accrued pension rights of verified and enrolled FGN retirees, she said, would result in reversing a major challenge that has lingered since 2014.
Dahir-Umar noted that the commencement of payment of the reviewed monthly pension contribution rate by the Federal Government was another significant step in ensuring compliance with the PRA 2014.
She explained further that most recent technological innovation introduced by the Commission was the in-house designed and developed online Enrolment Application, which has capabilities to register, verify and enroll prospective retirees of Treasury-Funded Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
“By the deployment of this new application, mass gathering of people has been avoided while enhancing convenience for the prospective retirees through a seamless enrolment process”, she stated.
Meanwhile, in compliance with FGN directive, PenCom has commenced payment of the 2.5 per cent differentials of 2004 and 2014 specified by the Pension Reform Act (PRA) to retirees. The beneficiaries were retirees between 2019 and 2020 of the Federal Government Treasury Funded Ministries, Departments The Pension Reform Act 2014 as amended, established a Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) whereby the employers were required to contribute 10 per cent of the employees’ salary to the scheme monthly.
The 10 per cent minimum contribution by employers is an increase of 2.5 per cent over the 7.5 per cent contribution stipulated by the repealed 2004 PRA.
In addition, the Act mandated employees to contribute a minimum of 8 per cent to the scheme monthly.
Also, Bisladnews.com gathered that the Commission has began computing the details of retirees between July 1, 2014 to Dec. 2018 and would soon commence their payment.
