Pension fund contribution arrears among Hong Kong employers have hit a three-year high amid the Covid-19 slump and an average of 28,500 default notices a month have been issued to non-compliant businesses since April, the city’s pensions supervisor has revealed.
Ayesha Macpherson Lau, the chairwoman of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, wrote on her official blog on Sunday she was concerned the increase in defaulting companies could weaken retirement protection for employees and promised to take steps to help affected workers.

“The figure is the highest in the past three years, reflecting a growing trend of default contribution cases since the pandemic began,” she wrote. “Any non-compliant behaviour related to the Mandatory Provident Fund will weaken the retirement protection of employees, and the authority will not stand idly by.”

Figures from the authority showed it issued 261,100 notices to employers who failed to make contributions on time in the 2019-20 financial year, or about 21,758 a month. Hong Kong recorded its first Covid-19 infection in January 2020.

The number of warnings rose to 304,000 in 2020-21 and to 317,500 in 2021-22, an increase of about 22 per cent over the period.
For the first six months of the present financial year, which started in April, the authority issued 171,000 late-payment notices, a monthly average of 28,500.
The average a month was 26,458 in 2021-22 and 25,333 in the previous financial year.

Read More @SCMP