Peter Hayibor, General Manager/General Counsel at the Social Security and National Trust(SSNIT) has called on Ghanaian workers to take advantage of the 2nd and 3rd tiers of the Trust

He noted that the 2nd and 3rd tiers would meet the needs of workers prior to retirement.

According to him, the 2nd and 3rd tiers offer access to funds, pledges and security for mortgage.

Speaking at an editors’ forum recently at Aburi in the eastern region, Mr Hayibor said the Trust’s 1st tier mandatory is the basic National social security scheme, with the 2nd tier being the mandatory fully funded and privately managed occupational Pension scheme.

He stated that the 3rd tier is a voluntary fully funded voluntary Provident Fund and Personal Pension scheme.

“These introduce competition through private sector involvement but are under strict regulations,” he underscored, adding that total tax relief of 35 percent of workers income are contributed into 1st & 2nd tiers.

SSNIT’s Investment assets increased by 27.9 percent from Ghc5,170.13 million in 2013 to Ghc6,610.43 million in 2014.

Its investments on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), comprising 22 out of the 36 listed companies on the GSE, recorded a market capitalization of Ghc2.01billion as at December 2014.

This represented 3.19 percent of the total GSE market capitalization of Ghc64.35 billion.

About 54.7 percent of SSNIT’s portfolio is invested in Government/Corporate Bonds and loan facilities extended to companies in various sectors. The scheme has developed 7,168 housing units nationwide, 96 percent of which have been sold to mostly salaried workers.

Evelyn Ampoful, actuarial Manager at SSNIT, in a presentation, said the Board of Trustees gave approval for monthly pensions to be adjusted upwards by an overall rate of 15%.

“That was broken into a fixed rate of 5% and a flat amount of Ghc36.92.

The flat amount of Ghc36.92 is equivalent to 10%.

“such rate of indexation also implied that no pensioner on the payroll as at 31st December 2014 would receive a monthly pension of less than Ghc246.92.”

The indexation rate cost the Trust an extra Ghc93.53 million.

By the foregoing, the minimum pension for 2015 was increased from Ghc200 to Ghc230 per month, an increase of 15.0 percent.

This covered new pensioners who were expected to join the payroll from January 2015 but whose pension amounts would be less than the minimum pension paid by the Trust.

T. F. Ohene, General Manager, operations, noted that there were 142,076 pensioners in all.

Active contributors as at the end of 2014 were 1,189,168.

Starting in 1965 under social security act 279 of 1965, social security in Ghana was established in January 1972 under NrCD 127 to administer the National social security scheme.

It was under the joint administration of the then Department of Pensions and the state Insurance Corporation as a Provident Fund scheme.

Its primary responsibility is to replace part of the lost income due to old age or Invalidity. It also pays survivors’ benefit to dependents of deceased members.