By Cynthia Alo
The nation’s pension scheme is targeting to enrol about 30 million Nigerians in the next five years, about 275 percent increase from current position.
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Acting Director General of the National Pension Commission, PenCom, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, made this disclosure at a lecture organised by Peninscope, tagged, ‘Role of pension & insurance in the economy in an election year.’
She said that the pension sector has eight million contributors presently and is canvassing other means to increase participation in the scheme to about 30 million people by year 2024.
Dahir-Umar also disclosed that PenCom is working on enhancing its information technology infrastructure so as to include, at least, 20 million people into the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS, in 2019.
The PenCom boss who was represented by the Deputy Zonal Head at PenCom, Mr Sola Adeseun stated: “The Commission is working on the IT infrastructure that will support the launch of the micro pension. With the implementation of micro pension, people under the informal sector can save in an account and receive the benefits when money is invested and it is protected under legislation instead of putting money under their mattresses.
“The introduction of the micro pension plan would assist the Commission to achieve the objective of ensuring at least twenty million contributors join the scheme by the end of 2019.”
Dahir-Umar said that PenCom recently approved the guidelines for micro pension scheme, adding, “It is a policy set to include self-employed and persons working in organizations with less than three employees, it further categorized the set of people for the scheme into three groups including, the low-income earners, the small & medium scale enterprises (SMEs), and the high-income earners.”
According to her, the system will be flexible, safe, convenient and simple with benefits which include decrease in the poverty associated with old age, enhanced economic development and macro-economic stability through investment in infrastructure and financial markets even as contributions will be transferred to designated beneficiaries in the event of a contributor’s death.
She stated that despite the challenges associated with the scheme including, financial literacy, low income, among others, the implementation of micro pension will yield positive results for Nigerians and the pension industry.
