Arunachal in pact with NSDL for NPS adoption

Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh has entered into an agreement with National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), authorising it to work as a Central Record Keeping Agency (CRA) for adoption of National Pension System (NPS). A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed here yesterday by Development Commissioner (Finance) Ramesh Negi on behalf of the state government and Chandrashekhar Tilak, Executive Vice President NSDL in presence of a host of bureaucrats, official sources informed here today. NPS is an initiative by the Centre and Arunachal Pradesh happens to be the 26th state to adopt it. With this, more than 6,160 employees, who have joined the services of the state government on or after January 1, 2008 would be able to avail the NPS benefits, sources said. As far as the IAS officials are concerned, the scheme would be effective from January 1, 2004. As on date Rs 11,04,34,388 has been deposited in the state government exchequer. More than 44 lakh subscribers across central government, state government, central and state autonomous bodies, few corporate and other citizens have been associated with NPS. The scheme, which has been running successfully for last few years, has funds of more than Rs 22,000 crore. Tilak, through a power point presentation during MoU signing ceremony, said NPS is a system wherein the eligible government subscribers contribute a fixed portion of their salaries and an equivalent contribution is made by the respective state government every month. "These amounts are transferred to empanelled Pension Fund managers (PFMs) for subsequent contribution in instruments like government securities, corporate and equities. "Collection of funds from the eligible entities and further transfer thereof is co-ordinated by Trustee Bank, namely Bank of India," he said. NSDL has been entrusted with the task of maintaining the subscriber-wise records of the investment made on their behalf. The entire NPS activity is regulated by Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority which has been created especially for this purpose by the Centre. Negi asked the NSDL team to organise a workshop atleast once in a year to create awareness, sources added. PTI