From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Director General, National Pension Commission (PenCom), Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, has described the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014 as one of the most important socio-economic reform initiatives of the Federal Government, saying it has led to a pension industry that has accumulated pension assets in excess of N13 trillion invested in various aspects of the Nigerian economy.
Dahir-Umar made the remarks in Abuja at a retreat organized by PenCom to review PRA 2014.
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 organize a public hearing in order to provide an avenue for stakeholders to formally make input into the proposed
amendments.
The PRA 2014 was enacted following a review of the initial Pension Reform Act of 2004, which introduced legal and institutional frameworks of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and established PenCom to regulate and supervise all pension matters in Nigeria.
The PenCom boss noted that the review was a corollary 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.
Consequently, the Commission, as the regulator of the pension industry, decided to coordinate and harmonize the various efforts in order to achieve a comprehensive and constructive review.
