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By Henry Uche
Nigeria’s Pension Fund Assets dropped by N90bn, from N19.75 trillion in February, 2024 to N19.66 trillion in March 2024. This is even as the number of retirement savings accounts membership hit 10,280,956.
According to a data on performance of the pension industry in March, 2024 recently released by the National Pension Commission (PenCom), the assets was N19.53trillion in January, grew by N130 billion to N19.75 trillion in February while it suffered a N90 billion setback in March, 2024 to stay at N19.66 trillion in March, 2024.
The nosedive in pension assets value could be connected to a lull in some investment outlets in which pension assets were invested in.
In March 2024, the equities market attracted N2.3 trillion, having rose from N1.77 trillion in December 2023.
This development, according to PenCom, translates to N530 billion invested in the equities market within three months under review. This also means the equities market had attracted about 11.79 per cent of the N19.66 trillion pension fund assets as at March 2024.
The Executive Eecretary/Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria(PenOp), Oguche Agudah, while reacting to this development, noted that, there is an increase in allocation to domestic listed equities by the pension funds from 8.56 percent to 9.89 percent of their total assets, adding that, foreign ordinary shares also played a role in the surge, even as the devaluation of the naira meant the revaluation of foreign assets upwards, leading to a growth in the value of foreign assets held by CPFAs by over N118 billion.
