Despite the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, the total assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme rose to N11.35tn as of the end of August, the latest figures from the National Pension Commission revealed on Wednesday.
According to the data, the funds rose from N11.08tn in June to N11.3tn in July.
The pension commission revealed that N7.51tn or 66.27 per cent of the funds had been invested in Federal Government’s securities.
Other areas where the funds were invested are domestic and foreign ordinary shares, corporate debt securities, local money market securities and mutual funds.
The commission also disclosed in its second-quarter report that following the issuance of demand notices to some defaulting employers whose outstanding pension contribution liabilities had been established by recovery agents, 16 of the affected employers remitted the sum of N261.33m during the period.
It said this represented a principal contribution of N152.79m and penalty of N108.54m during the quarter.
This brought the total recoveries made from inception to June 30 to N17.52bn comprising principal contribution of N8.89bn and penalty of N8.63bn.
During the quarter under review, PenCom said the Pension Fund Administrators registered a total of 2,839 contributors under the micro pension plan for which a total of N7.4m had been remitted to the Retirement Savings Accounts as pension contributions.
Cumulatively, it stated that a total of 51,974 informal sector workers had registered for the MPP and contributed the sum of N42.1m as of June 30.
During the quarter, PenCom said six participants converted from MPP to the mandatory CPS sequel to their employment in the formal sector.
This brought the total number of MPP participants who had converted to the mandatory CPS to 18 as of June 30.
It said the ECRS, which was deployed in June 2019, had provided a platform for addressing various issues identified with the contributor registration system.
The PFAs under the assistance of Pension Operators Association had commenced the implementation of a shared service approach in order to speed up the data recapture exercise, PenCom said.
It also disclosed that in the second quarter, the pension industry recorded a 0.45 per cent growth (41,074) in the scheme membership, moving from 9.06 million contributors at the end of the preceding quarter to 9.10 million.
The growth in the industry membership was driven by the RSA scheme, which had an increase of 41,147 contributors, representing 0.46 per cent, it said.
