Pension Scheme For Govt Staff Expected To Be In Place By May

New Delhi: The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) hopes to have the entire new pension scheme (NPS) architecture to be in place relating to Government employees by end-May this year. According to the source, a workshop on the ''overview of NPS and CRA (Central Recordkeeping Agency) architecture has been engaged in the process of registering the NPS trust and appointing a custodian and a trustee bank. The State Bank of India (SBI), the UTI Asset Management Company and Life Insurance Corporation have already incorporated their pension funds as new companies under the Companies Act, 1956 and are expected to start work by March 31, 2008. The three pension funds will be performing the investment management functions under the NPS for a fee. The NPS would at present offer only two investment choices - investment of entire contribution in Government securities alone or adopting the investment guidelines applicable to non-government provident funds. For non-government provident funds, the current Government guidelines provide that up to 15 per cent can be invested in equities and 85 per cent in fixed income instruments.

The NSDL Chairman, Mr C.B. Bhave, said that NSDL would take all efforts to make CRA operational with effect from June 1, 2008. The main functions and responsibilities of CRA include recordkeeping, administration and customer service functions for all subscribers of NPS; issue of unique permanent retirement account number (PRAN) to each subscriber and acting as an operational interface between PFRDA and other NPS intermediaries such as pension funds, annuity service provider and trustee bank.