The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) is reviewing its investment portfolios to generate better returns for the Trust.
Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, Director-General, SSNIT, disclosed this in an interaction with the media in Accra yesterday on a programme the Trust has initiated to enrol more sector workers on pension, and said the move was to raise more revenue to sustain the Trust.
The objective of the programme was to seek the views and support of the media on the programme.
SSNIT has initiated a campaign to rope in more informal sector workers and self-employed on pension in a bid to deepen pension coverage in the country.
The Director-General observed that some of the investment schemes of SSNIT did not bring enough revenue to the Trust for it to meet its financial obligations.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang, for example, said some of the hotel facilities of the SSNIT, which had been run down were not generating better financial returns for the Trust.
SSNIT recently put out a notice to seek strategic investors to run some of its hotel facilities such as the La Palm Royal Beach and Labadi Beach, Elmina Beach Resort, Ridge Royal Hotel, and Busua Beach resorts and the Trust Lodge.
He said SSNIT raised better returns in some of the companies in which it held minority shares, more than the companies the Trust held majority shares in.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang further disclosed that SSNIT was developing a paper for the Tripartite Committee involving the government, labour, and employers for consideration to strengthen the Trust and ensure its sustainability.
The paper, he said, included proposals for the increase in the pension age and increment in pension contributions.
“SSNIT is a partially funded scheme and the benefits far exceeds what the contributors put and there is the need to raise for financials resources to sustain the scheme,” Dr Ofori-Tenkorang, said.
Turning his focus on the programme to get more informal sector works on pension, the Director-General said SSNIT envisaged to enroll more than one million self-employed on the scheme in the new few years.
Currently only 14,314 self-employed workers contribute to SSNIT, which constitute 0.8 per cent of 1.7 million contributors of the scheme.
He said the programme was line with the mandate of SSNIT to get every working Ghanaian on the scheme.
The Director-General said the programme was to reduce poverty and overdependence on benefactors during old age and to provide partial income replacement and ensure that every workers had a guaranteed source of income during old age and until death.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said the 14, 314 informal workers on the pension scheme out of the working population of about 10 million, was woefully inadequate.
The Director-General entreated the self-employed to enrol on the SSNIT pension scheme to ensure their future income security and not become a liability on their families.
“SSNIT is best insurance scheme in the country since it pays its subscribers monthly till they die,” DrOfori-Tenkorang he said.
Apart from the monthly pension, the Director-General said there was invalidity pension and survivors lump sum benefit.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said SSNIT had outlined a number of strategies including the use of social and traditional media to reach the informal sector workers.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
