Central autonomous bodies urged to adopt pension scheme

New Delhi, July 28 (IANS) The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority has called upon all Central Autonomous Bodies (CABs), which have not yet adopted NPS (National Pension System) to do so without further delay.

“It is mandatory for all CABs, which had offered CPF (central provident fund) to its employees earlier to switch to NPS, but some CABs had not done so. He (PFRDA Chairman) urged them to adopt NPS without further delay, in view of the benefits of doing so, apart from the mandatory requirement,” the Finance Ministry said in statement quoting PFRDA Chairman Hemant Contractor.

Contractor was speaking at a PFRDA conference on implementation of the National Pension Scheme in CABs organised here on Wednesday.

The NPS was introduced for all central government employees (except armed forces) joining services on or after January 1, 2004.

Contractor said the state governments had voluntarily adopted te NPS in view of its merits. He mentioned that it was important for CABs to offer a pension benefit to their employees.

B.S. Bhandari, whole-time member (Economics) of PFRDA, spoke about the benefit of higher return under the NPS and power of compounding on this higher return resulting in better yield in comparison to other superannuation benefits.

Currently the NPS has more than 1.30 crore subscribers with total asset under management of more than Rs 1.37 lakh crore.