The National Pension Commission (PenCom) said it has registered 95,045 participants on the Micro Pension Plan (MPP) of the contributory pension scheme (CPS) and recorded a total contribution of over N435.6 million as of last month.

Head of the Micro Pensions Department, National Pension Commission (PenCom), Dauda Ahmed, said this in Lagos, at a workshop organised for Labour Writers’ Association of Nigeria (LAWAN).

Ahmed, who spoke on ‘Facilitating Financial Inclusion in the Informal Sector through the MPP’, said the total withdrawals stood at N30.3 million, while conversion from informal to formal was N6.51 million.

On some of the implementation challenges, he said there is lack of adequate incentives to encourage participation, different competing products in the market with more flexibility towards access to funds.

He also mentioned negative perception and trust deficit as challenges.

He said with statistics that over 80 per cent of the country’s working population falls under the informal sector, the demand to have workers financially inclusive as a tool for national development has become imperative.

Currently, he said, only a paltry 10 per cent are contributed, thereby calling for more advocacy.

“We are driving processes to make it more acceptable. In the informal sector, there is a lot of money there, but how can you tap into it? It needs a lot of sustained awareness creation.

“Having a financially inclusive informal sector serves as a vehicle for national development. To achieve the 40 per cent pension participation, the need for an urgent and effective policy, as well as regulatory response to large scale pension inclusion of the informal sector was desired,” he said.

The Head of Communications, PenCom, Abdulqadir Dahiru, who took the participants through an overview of pension schemes in Nigeria, reiterated the Commission’s commitment to ensuring the safety of pension funds and the provision of excellent services to stakeholders through the implementation of various reforms.

He said as the pension industry and financial system evolve, the Commission would continue to develop to surmount the challenges facing CPS.

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