The total membership of the Contributory Pension Schemes increased by 5.67 per cent from 8,469,257 as at December 31, 2018 to 8,949,536 as at December 31, 2019, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) has said.
According to the commission in its 2019 annual report, membership of the Retirement Saving Account (RSA) scheme dominated the total pension scheme memberships at 8,891,236 representing 99.35 per cent, while Approved Existing Scheme (AES) and the Closed Pension Fund Administrator (CPFAs) accounted for the balance of 0.65 per cent (40,951 and 17,349 respectively).
The RSA registrations increased from 8,410,184 as at December, 2018 to 8,891,236 as at December 31 2019, representing a growth rate of 5.72 per cent or 481,052.
The growth was attributed to a number of factors which include the increase in the level of compliance by the private sector as a result of the various steps taken by the commission to improve compliance and coverage such as engagement of recovery agents, as well as marketing strategies of the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs).
In addition, the enforcement of the requirements of the Public Procurement Act 2007 for bidders for Federal Government contracts to provide evidence of compliance with the PRA 2014 also had positive impacts on the increase in membership.
The commission further stated that following the launch of the Micro Pension Plan (MPP) in March 2019, the registration for the MPP commenced with the RSA registration count for participants standing at 39,686 as at December 31, 2019. It is expected that the RSA registration will continue to grow to improve Scheme membership with the sustained implementation of the Micro Pension Plan in 2020.
A breakdown of pension contributions showed that the total contributions remitted into the RSAs of employees in both the public and private sectors in 2019 amounted to N700.69 billion.This comprised of N331.56 billion or 47.32 per cent for the public sector and N369.13 billion or 52.68 % for the private sector.
Consequently, the total pension contributions cumulatively grew to N5,795.65 billion as at December 31 2019.This was made up of N2,895.97 billion contributions from the public sector, which represented 49.97 per cent of the total pension contributions and N2,899.68 billion from the private sector, which represented 50.03 per cent of the total.
Source: The Nation
