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Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Chairman Deepak Mohanty on Tuesday said the regulator is keen on pension funds investing in sovereign green bonds (SGBs).
The government is expected to issue SGBs in the second half of the current financial year as part of the overall market borrowing target of Rs 15.43 lakh crore.
During the last financial year, the government raised Rs 16,000 crore from the maiden issuance of SGBs for funding public sector projects seeking to reduce carbon emissions. Currently, there are 10 pension fund managers that manage funds under the National Pension System.
For the Atal Pension Yojana (APY), the regulator has set a target of 1.3 crore new subscribers to be added under the APY scheme in FY24 as against 1.2 crore in FY23.
Mohanty added that 29 lakh new subscribers have been enrolled under the scheme during the first quarter of the current financial year (FY23-24). In total, 5.2 crore enrolments have taken place since the launch of the scheme.
APY is the guaranteed pension scheme of the government that provides monthly pensions in the range of Rs 1,000-Rs 5,000 to self and spouse with the return of accumulated corpus to the surviving nominees.
On Tuesday, PFRDA reviewed the performance and strategies of banks and state level bankers’ committees (SLBCs) for 2023-24 to accelerate comprehensive coverage of APY.
In the north zone, Uttar Pradesh achieved 165 per cent of the target followed by Madhya Pradesh (145 per cent) and Rajasthan (117 per cent), Mohanty said. As on July 15, he said, APY coverage in the states of the north zone stood at over 1.98 crore.
