Finance minister P Chidambaram at the fourth meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the finance ministry, underscored that implementation of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act 2013 in letter and spirit would be a major task before the government.
The PFRDA Act, which was passed by Parliament on September 6 would give more teeth to the pension sector regulator basically aims to address apprehensions regarding safety and yield under the National Pension System (NPS). Meanwhile, Chidambaram highlighted that most countries were shifting from a 'defined benefit' pension system to a 'defined contribution' system to enable pension-related commitments to be sustainably discharged.
Further, endorsing the bill, Finance Minister highlighted that salient provisions of the Act related to subscriber interest including choice of pension fund manager, investment schemes to the subscriber, availability of minimum assured return schemes to be notified by the PFRDA and the option of investment. On the ground of these initiatives being relatively recent in origin, the Minister averred that work for NPS was still a work in progress and would be achieved in some time. Besides, he also emphasized the need to extend the reach of the NPS.
