The Hindu Business Line : NSDL to keep records for new pension scheme

PENSION CHALLENGES (From left)Mr N.N. Joshi, Chief Representative, ING International; Mr Anchal Pal, Member of Parliament; Ms. Shikha Sharma, CEO, ICICI Pru Life Insurance; Mr D. Swarup, Chairman, PFRDA, and Mr Norman R Sorensen, President, Principal International, at a conference in the Capital on Tuesday. - Kamal Narang

New Delhi April 10 The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has selected National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) as the Central Record Keeping Agency for the New Pension Scheme (NPS), its Chairman, Mr D. Swarup, has said.

The CRA will be responsible for keeping the accounts of each member of the NPS. NSDL has been selected out of six bidders that included UTI, LIC, Stock Holding Corporation of India.

"We have selected NSDL as the CRA yesterday (on Monday). The bidding process for selecting three pension fund managers (PFM) would soon be started," Mr Swarup told reporters on the sidelines of the conference on `Pension reforms in India-Opportunities and Challenges', organised jointly by FICCI and PFRDA here today.

He said that all the three PFMs would come from the public sector and only public sector asset management companies would be invited to bid.

"We are yet to finalise the terms like minimum networth etc," Mr Swarup said. The NPS is based on defined contribution and not on defined benefits, as was the case with the earlier government pension scheme. So far 19 States have adopted NPS.

Corpus

Mr Swarup said the NPS has corpus of about Rs 1,700 crore, comprising contributions of new government recruits of Central and State Governments after January 1, 2004. The entire fund has been deposited with the Public Account of India, yielding a return of 8 per cent per annum to the subscribers.

Following a meeting with State Chief Ministers, the Centre had in January this year notified an "interim investment pattern" on the same lines as the existing investment pattern of non-government provident funds. This would allow investment of 5 per cent of their corpus in shares of companies with investment grade debt rating from two rating agencies.

Cabinet approval

Meanwhile, a senior Finance Ministry said on Tuesday that the Ministry has moved a note on this issue and the Cabinet would soon consider for approval the proposal to move the accumulations of the Central Government employees who have opted for NPS out of the public account and give it to PFMs to be selected by PFRDA.

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