Ignatius Baffour Awuah
MINISTER OF Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has challenged pension trustees and operators in the country to step up efforts in boosting penetration to the informal sector.
According to him, trustees must stop focusing primarily on the informal sector which has about 12. 2 percent of the workforce.
He said the pension revenue for the formal sector which has about 12.2 percent workforce (both private and public) was around Ghc 20 billion.
The Minister said the country could earn more revenue from pension if more efforts are made in extending pension to the informal sector which has about 88 percent of Ghana’s workforce.
He was speaking on Wednesday, July 3, 2019, in Accra, at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop organised by the National Pension Regulatory Authority(NPRA) in collaboration with the World Bank.
The work themed: “Leveraging Switch Technology To Increase Pension Coverage To Informal Sector Worker,” aimed to present the main challenges faced by the pension system participants to reach, enrol and collect contributions in the informal sector.
It also aimed at presenting some technology advances that have been introduced in countries like Chile and Mexico where a switch has reportedly provided a leverage point for the pension administrators, facilitating outreach, contribution collection and general operations.
Mr. Baffour Awuah urged pension trustees to use innovative ways to penetrate into the informal sector especially through the use of the switch technology.
He asked insurance companies to make the charges and pricing of their products more comprehensible and accessible so those in the informal sector could patronize their services.
Chief Executive Officer of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Hayford Atta Krufi, explained that the workshop was necessary to help stakeholders have a better understanding of how switch may be able to bridge some gaps to support informal sector pension scheme, reach scale quicker and facilitate Ghanaians trustees to reach customers.
BY Melvin Tarlue & Susana Bart-Plange