Pension regulator targets NPS for all by early next year

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New Delhi, Sep 4: With finance minister P Chidambaram urging the Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) to allow the country’s entire workforce to join the New Pension Scheme (NPS) as soon as possible, the interim regulator is working towards meeting this mandate by early 2009.

“The expectation is to do so in less than six months, and we hope to have the system in place by the first quarter of next year,” PFRDA chairman Dhirendra Swarup told FE. The architecture for the NPS, which currently only covers government employees hired after January 1, 2004, is already in place.

The PFRDA is looking to appoint new fund managers to invest the retirement savings of the general public, thus segregating their contributions from the civil servants’ corpus. But this time around, there will be no bar on private sector fund managers from bidding for this business, though the amended PFRDA Bill mandates at least one fund manager be from the public sector.

Last year when the regulator appointed fund managers for the NPS, it had restricted entry to public sector entities. The PFRDA would, however, continue to use its existing record-keeping agency, NSDL, to maintain the accounts of both government employees and private individuals.

Although the PFRDA Bill offers various investment options under NPS with varying degrees of exposure to debt and equity, the regulator is setting up an expert group, led by HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, to advise it on suitable investment guidelines for deploying private workers’ funds.

Members of the panel are likely to be appointed by next week and it will submit its report by the end of November.

Pending passage of the Bill, NPS funds are being invested under guidelines for non-government provident funds. These guidelines currently cap equity investments at 5%, but the finance ministry has recently notified an increase in this ceiling to 15% starting April 1. Private individuals, however, when allowed into the NPS, will be given five investment options.