ADDRESS BYCHINELO ANOHU-AMAZU, DIRECTOR GENERAL, NATIONAL PENSION COMMISSION
AT THE AFRICA PENSION AWARDS CEREMONY
HELD AT THE CONGRESS HALL, TRANSCORP HILTON, ABUJA
ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2016
Protocol.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am highly honoured to welcome you to the second edition of the Africa Pensions Award, which is organised as an important activity marking the World Pension Summit ‘Africa Special’, 2016. The Africa Pension Awards was conceptualized and designed to recognize excellence, achievements and commitments to the development of pensions and social security across the African continent. The main objective of the Award is to create an opportunity for African countries to benchmark the progress made in the development of their respective pension and social security systems, while fostering positive local and global perception about these systems and the African concepts and capabilities.
Indeed, the role of pension and social security systems transcend the payment of retirement benefits, to eradicating old age poverty, creation of employment and stimulating growth of local economies. Today, pension and social security systems serve as catalysts for generating pool of long term investible funds that could be used to develop necessary ingredients for economic development such as infrastructure. Given the current global economic challenges occasioned by the drop in commodity prices, the funds generated under viable pension schemes have become veritable sources of financial intermediation in the efforts being made to diversify these economies towards economic growth.
In order to support economic development, it is fundamental that the pension fund is diversified to include investment in identifiable infrastructure, real estate and other key aspects of the real economy. In achieving this, pension funds require adequate guarantees by Government in addition to the development of the enabling vehicles through which the investments will be made. However, pension funds alone cannot provide all the answers to the amount of capital needed to meet the demands for recovery and the provision of all the necessary infrastructure. Countries must look at other effective and efficient means of financing including Foreign Direct Investments and Public Private Partnership arrangements.
No doubt, for African institutional investors to make the desired impact, it is imperative to strengthen the institutions towards ensuring good corporate governance. We must build and maintain investors’ trust and confidence – particularly, conditions and regulations should not change during the life cycle of investments. In addition, we must ensure that investment initiatives address environmental, social and governance principles, due to the need to focus on reducing products that are harmful to our lands and people. Similarly, we must not lose focus that pension assets are liability driven investments, which pay much attention to the promises made to pensioners. Thus, there is need for inculcate transparency in the way investment structures will be designed. This requires an increased investment and innovation in Information and Communication Technology infrastructure.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is imperative for the African pension and social security funds to emulate the investment focus of their sister funds from developed climes in the provision of infrastructure and in making visible economic impact. However, to successfully achieve these fiats, they must develop core competencies and capabilities. I am particularly happy that African institutions are already taking steps toward unlocking the potentials of this great continent towards achieving greatness.
While the World Pension Summit ‘Africa Special’ has provided a platform for sharing ideas toward realising these objectives, the Africa Pension Awards is a springboard for nurturing and promoting indigenous ideas for the development of sustainable pension and social security systems across the Region as well as realising the developmental goals of the jurisdictions.
I therefore congratulate those institutions that will be celebrated tonight and encourage pension and social security institutions across the continent to show case their ideas in the future editions of the Africa Pension Awards, not only for the award, but also to present achievements that other sister institutions can adopt or adapt, as the case may be, to improve their pension and social security systems.
Thank you and God Bless.
