CNPAS: The number of empty accounts for mandatory pension shall go down
"I am convinced, in time, the number of empty accounts for pillar II will go down" - this was the conclusion drawn yesterday by Mariana CAMPEANU, president of the National House for Pensions and Social Security (CNPAS), when analyzing the market on the PRIVATE PENSION DAY at FIAR 2008. She stated that the large number of empty accounts (without contributions) was caused mainly by the employers’ lack of discipline (to transfer the contributions or submit the nominal declarations), as well as by the negligence of certain sales agents who actually brought ineligible participants in the system. The empty accounts, over 961,000, represent 23.1% of the total number of almost 4.2 million participants to the system.
"The real work and problems are only about to start for CNPAS - we shall have many verifications to conduct. We should not blame the employers alone for the large number of empty accounts, because they did not submit the nominal declarations. Some of the enrollment forms were also incorrectly filled in. Some participants did not have a job when they signed the form - and here we talk about negligence of sales agents and brokers", said Mariana CAMPEANU.
When the collections started, she made public the names of certain large and/or famous companies that did not submit the nominal declarations on time, and this had an impact on the market, according to the head of CNPAS. "The reaction on the market was unexpectedly significant and positive. Yesterday, at the Pension House from Bucharest, we had a significant number of employers submitting the nominal declarations for social security contributions."
"Many of them, obviously, knew nothing about the system and their obligation to submit the CAS nominal declarations on time. They asked us the working hours for the private pensions. Employers do not have to do anything different from what they did so far, namely submit these declarations correctly and on time", she stated.
"We shall check the employers who did not submit these declarations and apply penalties. We know from our experience that an employer needs three months, in average, to comply. Probably this is the time horizon we need in order to see an improvement in the number of empty accounts", concluded the head of CNPAS.
