48.61% of N7.9b Pension Fund Assets Invested in FGN Bonds

By Dipo Olowookere

A new report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that the Pension Fund Asset under Management as at the first quarter of 2018 stood at N7.9 billion compared with N7.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017.

In the report titled ‘The Pension Asset and RSA Membership Data Q1 2018’, it was disclosed that FGN Bonds had the highest weight percentage of 48.61 percent of the total pension fund assets.

This is closely followed by treasury bills with 20.89 percent weight and domestic ordinary shares with 9.25 percent weight while agency bonds has the least with 0.07 percent weight.

From the report obtained on the website of the stats office, about 8 million workers were registered under the pension scheme in the period under review in contrast to 7.8 million registered workers in Q4 2017.

The NBS said further that participants within the age distribution 30-39 years have the highest percentage composition closely followed by participants within the age bracket of 40-49 years and 50-59 years while participants above 65 years have the least percentage composition.

A review of the data by Business Post showed that the total composition has 5.6 million male participants in the scheme, while 2.3 million are female subscribers.

The stats office explained that the data it used to arrive at these figures was supplied administratively by National Pension Commission, but was verified and validated by it (NBS).