Delta State Governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan on Tuesday restated his belief that the World Pension Summit will sufficiently unlock pension assets for national development.
“From the presentations, it is obvious it (World Pension Summit) will address these issues”, adding that “you have a lot of money lying down there, about N4 trillion and yet developers are struggling to get money from the banks at a very high interest rates” he said on Sunrise Daily.
He also advocated for the provision of long term loans for local, state and national developers “because most of the funds from the banks (now) are short term funds” insisting that “the only way we can provide long term funds is through monies like this”.
“And because they are short term funds in the bank, the interest rates are very high. But if this money is made available, it will reduce the interest rate and people can now borrow more and be able to develop”, he noted.
He allayed fears that pensioners might lose their money to investors/developers who access the monies as loans, advising that pension custodians and government should not only return loaned money but share the interest that accrue from it with the pensioners.
He disclosed strides taken by his administration in pension contribution, adding that they have exceeded the proposed 15 per cent pension contribution by employer and employee to implement a 17 per cent contribution.
“We actually started with 16 per cent and it was heavy on us. At that time the law was 7.5 per cent.
He noted that, due to the weight it bore on the state, “we actually reduced it to 10 per cent. For us, the new law just confers with what we have been doing” since “the government pays 10 per cent and the employees pay 7.5 per cent.
“So in Delta State, we have been doing 17.5 per cent, not even the 15 per cent” required by law, adding that “what we will just do now is to increase that of the workers to 8 per cent to make it 18 per cent”, he said.
Mr Uduaghan, who noted that though it is a big financial burden to any state involved, urged other states to reconcile the differences between the old and new schemes and create legacy funds to pay beneficiaries between the old and new schemes.
He also noted that the new pension scheme has been designed to stop fraudulent activities from occurring as it is contributory, by employer and employee, and can be monitored by the beneficiary unlike the old system where it was solely operated by the government under the Pay As You Go system.
Mr Uduaghan also hoped that the World Pension Summit will come out with some recommendations that will ensure that the funds are better managed, where players and beneficiaries will benefit from the scheme.
