The Finance Ministry will finalise a new Chairman for the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) by January, a top Ministry official said. Earlier this month, Yogesh Agarwal resigned as Chairman of PFRDA, ahead of it being reconstituted as a statutory authority.

“We will come out with a notification shortly inviting suitable applicants for the post of Chairman and we will finalise a candidate within a month,” said Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Takru. Senior bureaucrats and regulatory officials are likely to apply for the position.

Takru said the Finance Ministry has also finalised three whole-time members for PFRDA and the official notification will be released shortly. The committee includes Takru, Arvind Mayaram, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs; Syamal Kumar Sarkar, Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training; T.S. Vijayan, Chairman of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, and S.B. Mathur, former Chairman of Life Insurance Corporation of India.

At present, the Government has given Anup Wadhawan, Joint Secretary in the Department of Financial Services, additional charge as Chairman of the pension regulator.

PFRDA administers the National Pension System (NPS) for Union and State Government employees and the unorganised sector. Currently, NPS has 55 lakh subscribers with a total corpus of Rs 35,000 crore. The scheme has given returns of 12-14 per cent over the last one year.

According to a pension fund managers, distribution remains the major issue for the NPS as the commissions for marketing and distribution of the NPS is very low at 0.25 per cent, especially for retail distribution.

deepa.nair@thehindu.co.in

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