The union government on Thursday suggested that states should quickly deposit remittances collected to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) in order not to lose out on the interest.
"There has been a delay in the remittances of pension fund collected by the states to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) resulting in loss of interest," said Special Secretary, Expenditure, Ajay Narayan Jha, while addressing a conference here on states' implementation of the National Pension System (NPS).
"Pensions and pension payout have become a very big challenge. They have been growing steadily and the liability for the pension payments is going to cast a very heavy burden on the exchequer.
"The delay in remittances also impacts subsequent investments," he added.
Jha said the pension liabilities of all state governments, which was around 3 percent of the total revenue expenditure, excluding salary and interest payments, in 2004-05, increased to 12.3 percent in 2012-13.
Currently, all states except West Bengal and Tripura are part of NPS, while so far Rs.50,000 crore had come from states under the scheme.
More From This Section
PFRDA chairman Hemant Contractor said that while Tamil Nadu had issued the notification in this regard, the state is yet to join the NPS.
He also said a proposal to allow private fund managers to manage government pension funds was under the latter's consideration.
"We have placed before the government a proposal to allow private sector fund managers to manage government corpus and that matter receiving the government's attention. We have had some discussions with them. They have to take a call," he said.