Ignatius Baffour-Awuah
Government has announced the payment of a total of GH¢3.1 billion into custodian accounts of the various public sector registered pension schemes.
The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, announced this at a Meet-the-Press series organised by the Ministry of Information in Accra.
According to him, the various schemes included the Ghana Education Service Occupational Pension Scheme, Health Sector Occupational Pension Scheme, Judicial Service Occupational Pension Scheme and Hedge Master Trust Occupational Pension Scheme.
He noted that the disbursement was made under the Temporary Pension Fund Account (TPFA).
He noted that efforts were being expedited to bring all matters arising out of the TPFA transfers, including data reconciliation of beneficiaries and the issue of past credit, to a logical conclusion.
The sector minister added that as a result of many more efforts deliberately put in place, there had been an increase in the membership and contributions to the personal pension scheme.
In line with President Akufo-Addo’s directive on May Day this year, he said serious attention had been given to these matters to facilitate the smooth and efficient payment of Tier 2 Pension benefits from 2020.
“As of the first quarter of 2019, the total membership of personal pension scheme was 158,577, with a total asset under management of GH¢ 88,646,234.58 ($17,729,246.92),” he said.
Mr. Baffour-Awuah said as of 31st December 2018, the active worker population recorded on the Tier 1 was 1,533,942.
He added that new members enrolled onto the SSNIT Scheme increased from 281,303 in 2017 to 611,397 as of May 2019, at an average growth rate of 46.8 per cent.
According to him, as part of efforts to sanitize the operations of SSNIT, government embarked on an exercise from February 2019 to identify and eliminate “ghost” pensioners from the SSNIT payroll, helping the Trust save over GH¢43.8 million as of the end of May 2019.
Under the Tier 2, he revealed that there were 1,427,137 contributors as of the end of 2018.
He, however, complained that there were a lot of informal sector workers within the Ghanaian population uncovered by pension; he, therefore, called for efforts to be made to extend coverage.
Besides, he bemoaned that even though the pension industry was beginning to experience some tremendous improvements, there were some key challenges impeding progress in the pension sector.
He mentioned under-declaration of basic salaries of employees by some employers in order to pay low contributions for employees.
“This ultimately affects their pensions because pensions are direct reflection of the salaries on which contributions are paid,” he said.
BY Melvin Tarlue