Pension Assets Rise By N1.11tn, Hit N13.42tn

Prime Business Africa has gathered that the pension assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme rose by N1.11tn in 2021.

This Newspaper obtained the figure from the National Pension Commission’s report released on Wednesday.

PenCom, in its unaudited reports on pension funds industry portfolio, said the pension assets rose to N13.42tn on December 31, 2021 from N12.31tn at the end of 2020.

The reports showed that N8.77tn was invested in Federal Government’s securities, N943.34bn in corporate debt securities, N2.01tn in local money market securities, and N120.73bn in mutual funds.

PenCom said N915.31bn was invested in domestic ordinary shares while N122.49bn was invested in foreign ordinary shares.

The commission had said recently in a statement that it organised a retreat on the review of the Pension Reform Act 2014 in Abuja in January.

It said the retreat aimed to identify salient issues to be reviewed in the PRA 2014 as a prelude to advancing legislative action on the bill.

“It is expected that the National Assembly would subsequently organise a public hearing in order to provide an avenue for stakeholders to formally make input into the proposed amendments,” PenCom said.

It said the PRA 2014 was enacted following a review of the initial Pension Reform Act of 2004, which introduced legal and institutional frameworks of the CPS and established the commission to regulate and supervise all pension matters in Nigeria.

The Director-General, PenCom, Aisha Dahir-Umar, said the PRA 2014 codified one of the most important socioeconomic reform initiatives of the Federal Government, leading to a pension industry that has accumulated pension assets in excess of N13tn invested in various aspects of the Nigerian economy.

According to her, the review is a consequence to some implementation challenges encountered with certain sections of the Act not long after its enactment in July 2014.

This is in addition to persistent calls from stakeholders for the amendment of some sections of the Act, which resulted in several legislative initiatives through the sponsorship of bills for amendment of the PRA 2014 by the National Assembly.

PenCom said as the regulator of the pension industry, it decided to coordinate and harmonise the various efforts in order to achieve a more comprehensive and constructive exercise for the review of the PRA 2014.