Ugo Aliogo
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) Wednesday disclosed that about 8.41 million Nigerians are presently captured in the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
The commission disclosed this in its Pension Fund Assets Summary as at December 2018, that was obtained Wednesday.
PenCom’s spokesman, Mr. Peter Aghowa, disclosed that the number would rise in the coming days as more Nigerians would key into the scheme through the micro pension scheme to be launched this quarter.
“We have no idea of the number of Nigerians that would key in at the launch of the scheme. However, we intended covering the entire informal sector over time, this is about 60 million citizens,” the Commission said.
PenCom said the micro pension scheme would add additional N3 trillion to the existing N8.45 trillion pension assets.
The commission, which also said the scheme would bring in about 20 million contributors into the contributory pension scheme(CPS), stated that all was set for the official launch of the scheme nationwide.
Micro pension is a pension scheme for the self- employed and persons operating in the informal sector.
The Contributory Pension Scheme established under Section 3(1) of the Pension Reform Act, 2014 provided for the inclusion of the informal sector into the scheme. Since then, PenCom has been trying to reposition its operations to ensure that it captures the informal sector.
