The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has called on the National Assembly to review and amend some salient issues in the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA 2014).
The commission said the review is a corollary to some implementation challenges encountered with certain sections of the Act not long after its enactment in July 2014.
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.
Meanwhile, the commission held a retreat recently on the review of the PRA Act as a prelude to advancing legislative action on the Bill. The retreat aimed to identify the salient issues to be reviewed in the PRA 2014.
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“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 commission stated.
Speaking during the opening ceremony of the retreat, Aisha Dahir-Umar, the director general of PenCom, informed the participants that the PRA 2014 codified one of the most important socioeconomic reform initiatives of the Federal Government, leading to a pension industry that has accumulated pension assets in excess of N13 trillion invested in various aspects of the Nigerian economy.
She noted that the review also follows 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
more comprehensive and constructive exercise for the review of the PRA 2014,” she said.
