Pension Assets Grow by Over N289bn to N10.5trn in Two Months

• Pension Assets Grow by Over N289bn to N10.5trn in Two Months

Pension assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme grew to N10.5 trillion in February, according to the figures obtained from the National Pension Commission on Tuesday.

In the figures released on Tuesday, the funds grew assets by N289 billion in two months from N10.21 trillion reported at the end of 2019 to N10.5 trillion in February.

According to the commission, N7.09 trillion of the total sum has been invested in Federal Government Bonds while N141.06 billion was invested in state governments’ securities.

Another N662.29 billion was invested in corporate debt securities while N2.6 billion and N1.6 trillion were invested in supra-national bonds and local money market securities.

Similarly, management invested N7.8 billion and N29.9 billion in foreign money market securities and mutual funds. In the domestic ordinary shares and foreign ordinary shares, operators invested N532.4 billion and N65.04 billion respectively.

Pension management also invested N219.7 billion and N38.4 billion in real estate properties and private equity funds. Another N47.3 billion and N64.8 billion were invested in infrastructure funds and cash and other assets respectively.

Mr Muhammad Ahmad, the pioneering Director-General, National Pension Commission, said, “There is also a need to promote credit enhancement market in the short term.

“Currently, infraCredit is virtually the only private institution, backed by MDFOs, providing such guarantees (incentives) in Nigeria.

“However, enabling environment such as policies on project preparation to enable quality project issuance, needs to be established so as to walk ourselves out of provision of guarantees in the future.”

Aisha Dahir-Umar, who is the acting Director-General, PenCom, said the scheme was necessary given current challenges facing the nation and pension landscape in Nigeria.

She said, “The Contributory Pension Scheme was established to address challenges bedeviling the erstwhile retirement benefit system (Pay As You Go/Defined Benefit) in the public sector and Provident Fund/Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund in the private sector.”