29,458 firms exit contributory pension scheme – PenCom

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has said 29,485 companies with less than three employees which were registered with Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) had either been liquidated or ceased to exist.

PenCom stated this in a document it presented to the National Assembly, adding that about 7 million employees working with public/private sector employers have registered with PFAs for the management of their pension contributions.

It maintained that the number of companies whose employees have so far registered is 73,403 and that of this number, 43,918 employers with more than three employees have largely complied with the provisions of the PRA.

“The remaining 29,485 with less than three employees are mostly the non-compliant organizations. This category of employers are usually more of portfolio companies and in some cases are companies that had either been liquidated or ceased to exist.

“Regular remittance of contributions is an important aspect of compliance with the law. The monthly remittance by private sector has gradually improved and the returns for the month of December 2015 indicated that N45 billion (or 70% of the total expected remittance) was remitted to 1,607,361 RSAs,” it said.

It said the engagement of recovery agents in 2012 contributed in the improvement of the amount of average monthly remittance of pension contributions from N35 billion in 2011 to over N55 billion in 2015.

The commission posited that through the efforts of recovery agents, the pension assets of the industry have grown steadily from N110.69 billion in 2006 to N5.302 trillion in December, 2015 and that the membership of the various pension schemes has grown from 1.6 million in 2006 to 6.89 million in December, 2015.