…As capital market negotiates for more funds to drive investment
Players in the capital market have called on government to release at least 50per cent of the pension funds into the stock market for trading and investment purposes.
A consultant with the Ghana Stock Exchange, GSE, David Tetteh, said keeping pension funds in state accounts when it could be invested in several sectors of the economy through the capital market is worrying.
“Currently, government holds 70 per cent of the pension funds. Only 30 per cent has been released into the capital market for investment purposes. “Government must release the pension funds. It’s necessary for the funds to be released. About 70 per cent of the pension funds are being held by government. Talks are currently ongoing with the Ministry of Finance, National Pensions
Regulatory Authority, NPRA, the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC to ensure that government releases major part of the funds into the capital market,” he said.
As at January 2018, government had accumulated about 8.5 billion Ghana cedis that are 5.4 per cent of GDP in the Tier 2 pension scheme.
The NPRA as at the end of January 2018 has transferred a sum of GHC556m, representing contributions of 258,422 private sector workers from 8,116 employers for 96 registered schemes.
The authority has transferred GHc3.1 billion accrued contributions of 2nd Tier funds of public sector workers into the custodial accounts of the registered four public sector schemes, namely,
Hedge, Master Trust Schemes, and GES, Occupational Pension Scheme, the Judicial Service Occupation Pension and other public sector workers who do not belong to any of the major schemes.
The total accrued contributions in the temporary pension fund account for the private sector workers as at January 2018, stands at GHc230,664 comprising total contributions and accrued interest over the period.
The total assets under the management of private pension funds as at January 2018 stood at GHc10.989880 billion Ghana Cedis constituting about 5.4 per cent of GDP.