The Federal Government has been urged to develop attractive infrastructure bonds that will guarantee the safety of pension funds which investment experts and government have been eyeing for infrastructural development.
The Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) emphasized that at present in the country, there is no attractive infrastructure bond that can guarantee the safety of pension funds if invested in infrastructural development. They said in the face of the dwindled income of government occasioned by fall in oil price, they are ready to assist the Federal Government to finance its infrastructural projects through the N5.3 trillion pension assets,
The Chairman, Pension Funds Operators of Nigeria(PenOp), Mr. Eguarekhide Longe, said its members are ready to invest in infrastructure bonds whenever the government decides to float them to finance key developmental projects.
He promised that the pension fund managers are ready to engage with government to expand the economic space, even though, it is not their primary objective.
Longe further states that care must be taken not to invest pension funds in a project that will not regenerate returns, warning that “if pension fund is put in a project that does not regenerate return, the money would get lost and the project will not be delivered because it was not properly conceived.”
He, however, debunked claims that PFAs don’t want to invest pension assets in infrastructure, noting that the managers had requested the investment banking community to come out with products that abide by the investment guidelines in Pension Act, which operators can finance, noting that this has not been done.
