A total of 58,800 informal sector workers have been registered as contributors under the Micro Pension Plan (MPP), since its inception in March 2019.
This information is contained in the Q3 2020 report recently released by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
The sum of N64.7million had been contributed – N46.7m was contributed in year 2020 (Q1 – Q3), while N18.0m was contributed in 2019, i.e. from March to December 2019.
In the same vein, 19,114 new contributors were registered in 2020 and 39,686 registered in 2019.
In Q1 2020, 9,449 registered under the plan and contributed N16.8m but dropped in Q2 2020 to 2,839 contributors with the sum of N7.4m, which could be attributed to business challenges encountered during the pandemic lockdown period between March and June.
In Q3 2020, the figure, in terms of number of new enrolees and contribution, improved significantly to 6,826 and contributions of N22.5m.
The Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014 expanded the scope of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) to include persons working in informal sectors, based on PenCom’s strategic objective of deepening the market and covering at least 30% of the working population in Nigeria by the end of the year 2024.
Micro Pension Plan (MPP) presents a great business opportunity for the Pension operators as Nigeria has about 59.6 million workers in the informal sector that are not involved in any pension scheme.
Towardsachieving a desirable critical mass, it is important that the operators create reasonable visibility/awareness about the scheme. The scheme is quite new in Nigeria but it is quite promising if the operators can adequately harness the abundant opportunities that exist therein.
