Need to develop India into insured society: Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday stressed on the need to evolve India into an insured society and to provide income security and pension facility to its senior citizens.

Interacting at the Fourth Annual Conference on Pension organized by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) here, the Finance Minister said that it important to provide old age income security and pension facility to the citizens on the basis of the evolving demographic profile, changing socio-economic structure and limitations on the fiscal resources.

"The dependency of senior citizens is a grave challenge for the society and it can be met with evolution of concept of pension and its expansion," Jaitley said.

Taking at the conference, Chairman of the PFRDA, Hemant Contractor said that the authority endeavour to provide pension cover to all those who do not have it.

He further informed that the PFRDA is considering to introduce an auto enrolment system under National Pension System (NPS), in which all the employees working in government identified sectors or industries in unorganized sector would be automatically covered.

He even assured that necessary step will be taken to increase the outreach of NPS and Atal Pension Yojana (APY).

The Theme of the Conference was 'Creating an Inclusive and Sustainable Pension System in India: Opportunities and Challenges, in which the deliberations were held during two technical sessions Channelizing savings for old age income security and Pension Payouts: The Road Ahead.

The Finance Minister also inaugurated the PFRDA's website on financial literacy and pension planning- 'Pension Sanchay'.

The seven performing APY-SPs (Banks) were also awarded for bringing subscribers under the social security net.

Jaitley also released a report titled- 'Security for Seniors- Opportunities and Challenges for creating an Inclusive and Sustainable Pension System in India" prepared by PFRDA in association with CRISIL.