Informal sector’ll join contributory pension in 2019 – PenCom

The Acting Director-General, National Pension Commission, Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, has said that the informal sector will be allowed to join the Contributory Pension Scheme under its micro-pensions scheme in the first quarter of 2019.
She said this during the 6th conference for directors of pension operators in Lagos, which was organised by the commission as part of its statutory mandate of promoting capacity building and institutional strengthening of licensed pension operators.
Dahir-Umar said, “In the social sphere, the commission is finalising arrangements for the introduction of the micro-pension plan, which seeks to extend the benefits of the Contributory Pension Scheme to the informal sector.
We hope to achieve this latest by the first quarter of 2019 and we believe that the product would be part of the efforts towards ensuring, in the long term, the sustainability of the Federal Government’s social empowerment programme.” The regulator noted that the conference was an avenue to update the directors on topical issues in the industry and sharpen their capacity to effectively discharge the onerous responsibility of steering the affairs of such companies.
She said the pension reform had been very impactful in Nigeria since the beginning of its implementation in 2004.
Dahir-Umar said, “The major visible areas of this impact are the economic and social spheres.
Thus, the formation of long-term domestic capital, represented by the over N8.5tn worth of pension assets, is slowly but surely changing Nigeria’s financial landscape and, by extension, the course and pace of our socioeconomic development.” Due to the modest successes recorded in the implementation of the CPS, she observed an increasing clamour by pension contributors to redirect their retirement savings towards the resolution of other social problems, such as health, unemployment and other similar challenges.
“Indeed, the year 2017 was particularly difficult for the industry as we had to contend with several bills before the National Assembly seeking to distort or dismantle the Contributory Pension Scheme.
Our social partners played a critical role in that struggle which, we finally successfully surmounted,” she said.
Dahir-Umar added that one of the important lessons learnt from that experience was the imperative of continuous stakeholders’ collaboration and engagement.

Leave a Reply