The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) campaign to encourage workers save for the future has started yielding positive results, with more than Shs100 billion in June 2017.
According to the NSSF Managing Director Richard Byarugaba, that is the best collection in the Fund’s history; Shs15 billion more compared to Sh85 billion that the Fund collected in June 2016, just a year ago.
“2016/17 has been a challenging financial year, but we have come through with yet another collections’ milestone that is above our monthly collections target of Shs77 billion,” Byarugaba said.
The NSSF is mandated by an Act of Parliament to collect monthly contributions from companies employing five people and above, with each employee contributing 5 percent of his monthly salary while the company makes a 10 percent contribution, making it 15 percent.
And, according to Byarugaba, he is optimistic the NSSF will improve last year’s overall financial performance, despite of the economic challenges that the country faced in the just concluded financial year.
“We have started appraising our overall performance for the just concluded financial year and we will communicate to our members after completion of this process. But going by our reviews over the last 12 months, I am positive that we have created value for our members,” Byarugaba says.
Last year, despite realising a good return for the year 2015/16, Byarugaba says their performance was affected by the decline of stock markets in the East African region that contracted the Fund’s equity portfolio.
NSSF has diverse investments such as fixed income, real estate and equities. It is the largest institutional investor on the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) and one of the largest domestic holders of Government of Uganda debt, trading in treasury bills and bonds.
Meanwhile, the planned liberalisation of the pension scheme, according to analysts will enable participating pension schemes collect more money from workers but first the schemes have to wait until Parliament passes the pension bill into law. The law is expected to open up the pension market.
Meanwhile, Fund managers have embarked on the countrywide campaign to encourage voluntary contributions from members of the public, more so, the informal sector, a development that will see farmers, bodaboda riders, welders, mechanics and other categories of workers save for the future.
