NPSM account increases by 7.3 million

The National Pension Scheme Memberships (NPSM) has recorded about 7.3 million members in the third quarter of 2016, representing 15.87 per cent increase compared to 6.3 million in the corresponding period of 2014.

The latest figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), stated that membership of pension scheme was 6.329 million in the third quarter of 2014, representing 3.92 per cent increase compared to 6.09 million in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, retirement savings account (RSA) remained the dominant scheme accounting for 99 per cent or 6,263,811 accounts.Nevertheless, the RSA remained overriding account even in the third quarter of 2016, with 99 per cent of the total, with the Federal Government employees having 1.8 million accounts, followed by the state governments with 1.4 million.

A further breakdown of the RSA accounts revealed that 5.1 million accounts holders were male and two million, as female within the 30-39 years age group.

The Director-General, Pension Commission Ondo State, Jaiyeola Olowosuko, said the rate of membership is still low compared to the labour strength of the country.

He described the situation where many of the states are yet to adopt the pension scheme and workers in some states in the country are yet to receive their salaries for months due to the reason that it is best known to the concerned states in the country.

Commenting on NPSM, the Executive Secretary, Pension Funds Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp), Mrs. Susan Oranye, said it shows the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) is working and people are getting more aware of the importance of having a pension.
 
According to her, it also shows that the efforts of PENCOM in enforcing compliance are bearing fruit. There is still much more to achieve but it’s steadily growing. Once the Micropension scheme kicks off, we expect more.

As at the press time, several calls was put across to some stakeholders in the pension industry for their reactions to be included in the story through text messages were yet to get responses, some say tomorrow they are going to reply while others ignored calls.