By Benedict Tembo
The National Pension Scheme Authority (NAPSA) intends to venture into mineral value addition.
To this effect, NAPSA has made the first call for proposals for consultants to help it venture into mineral value addition.
NAPSA believes this is an important step towards achieving its goal of driving the growth of the local manufacturing industry and deriving maximum value from the country’s natural resources while creating jobs both in the formal and informal sectors.
“This is the NAPSA formula to assure the sustainability of the scheme,” NAPSA director general, Muyangwa Muyangwa said today at the 2024 NAPSA stakeholders’ forum in kitwe.
Mr Muyangwa envisages that the mineral value addition will be high impact on NAPSA’s investment front.
“We have made significant strides in refocusing our energies and investments to high impact economic sectors that help to respond to the current economic challenges and contribute to the achievement of the broader national economic transformation agenda of reviving the manufacturing industry and increasing copper production,” he said.
Mr Muyangwa said NAPSA’s recent a US$500 million investment in the expansion of the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway and the phase two of the Maamba Energy Power plant speak to its determination to support national development and drive economic growth in real terms.
On penalty reduction and penalty waiver, Mr Muyangwa said that beginning January, 2024 NAPSA implemented a Government initiative to reduce the penalty rate for paying contribution late to 10 percent from the 20 percent.
“We also implemented a government plan to support business growth through a penalty waiver programme that will run for two years, during which employers can get penalty relief for penalties incurred as far back as 2000 when the scheme started and for penalties incurred under specific conditions going forward.
He said NAPSA has todate approved a total of 5,704 penalty waiver applications amounting to over K1.2 billion.
“This has enabled us to collect contributions totalling about K43 million. Through this process, we are also cleaning up employer details. We are glad to report that over 35,000 employers have signed on our new online system meaning that we have clean employer details for those employers. This is very important for our communication and engagement as well as to our drive to improve compliance,” Mr Muyangwa said.
Regarding online compliance certificate, the NAPSA director general said the NAPSA compliance certificate is now online.
“This is another milestone in our quest to improve the experience of obtaining services from NAPSA. Today, employers do not need to visit NAPSA offices to get their compliance certificates because they can do this from the comfort of their homes or offices. This development is also helping us to keep employer details up to date because employers are required to update or confirm their details before getting their compliance certificates,” he said.
On system integration with other key players, mr Muyangwa said NAPSS has continued its drive to integrate its systems with those of other key players in the social security space to enable seamless information exchange for improved service delivery.
He also said biometric identification is one of the most important aspects of pension administration is correct and accurate identification of individual members.
“Currently we are supporting the government-led biometric ID project that will help to improve member identification. this will open new opportunities in service delivery as it will enable us introduce more self-service products that will bring services closer to our customers and improve overall the customer experience that we can offer. We trust that this project will gain traction and be completed as soon as possible,” Muyangwa said.
