IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/3033.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The role of occupational pension funds in Mauritius

Author

Listed:
  • Vittas, Dimitri

Abstract

Mauritius belongs to a select group of developing countries where contractual savings-savings with insurance companies and pension funds-exceed 40 percent of GDP and represent a major potential force in the local financial system. Pension funds account for 75 percent of contractual savings. Contractual savings institutions invest in government securities, housing loans, corporate securities, real estate and bank deposits. They currently hold 35 percent of government securities and also account for 36 percent of total outstanding housing loans.Given their strong demand for long-duration assets, they can stimulate the issue of long-term government bonds (both inflation-linked and zero-coupon) and the development of corporate debentures, mortgage bonds, and mortgage-backed securities.Mauritius has a balanced and well-managed multipillar pension system. In addition to several public components, such as the Basic Retirement Pension, the National Pensions Fund (NPF), the National Savings Fund, and the Civil Service Pension Scheme, there are over 1,000 funded occupational pension schemes that play an increasingly important part in the whole system. The funded schemes are divided into two main groups-those insured and/or administered by insurance companies, and those that are self-administered and are registered with the Registrar of Associations. Coverage of the funded schemes is estimated at about 10 percent of the labor force. Together with the unfunded civil service scheme, occupational pension schemes cover about 100,000 employees or 20 percent of the labor force. All types of pension funds, including the public ones, report low operating costs. This reflects the absence of marketing and selling costs and, in the case of large private pension funds, the assumption of some costs by sponsoring employers. The investment performance of the self-administered funds was less than fully satisfactory in the late 1990s, reflecting poor returns on the local and foreign equity markets. Funds insured or administered by insurance companies as well the NPF performed better during this period because of their heavier allocations in government securities and housing loans. However, over a longer period, the private pension funds probably outperformed the NPF. The regulatory framework, though fragmented, is not unreasonable. It has many important provisions, such as observance of internationally acceptable accounting and actuarial standards and minimum vesting and portability rules, and it does not impose prescribed limits on investments. However, consolidation and modernization of the regulatory framework is required, while supervision, which is currently nonexistent, needs to be developed and to be proactive.

Suggested Citation

  • Vittas, Dimitri, 2003. "The role of occupational pension funds in Mauritius," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3033, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2003/05/23/000094946_03051404103339/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vittas, Dimitri, 2003. "The insurance industry in Mauritius," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3034, The World Bank.
    2. Bodie, Zvi, 1990. "Pensions as Retirement Income Insurance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 28-49, March.
    3. Vittas, Dimitri, 1998. "Regulatory controversies of private pension funds," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1893, The World Bank.
    4. Mr. Arvind Subramanian & Mr. Devesh Roy, 2001. "Who Can Explain The Mauritian Miracle: Meade, Romer, Sachs or Rodrik?," IMF Working Papers 2001/116, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Queisser, Monika & Vittas, Dimitri, 2000. "The Swiss multi-pillar pension system : triumph of common sense?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2416, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vittas, Dimitri, 2003. "The insurance industry in Mauritius," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3034, The World Bank.
    2. Mauricio Soto & Mr. Vimal V Thakoor & Mr. Martin Petri, 2015. "Pension Reforms in Mauritius: Fair and Fast—Balancing Social Protection and Fiscal Sustainability," IMF Working Papers 2015/126, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Montserrat Pallares-Miralles & Carolina Romero & Edward Whitehouse, 2012. "A Worldwide Overview of Facts and Figures," World Bank Publications - Reports 11891, The World Bank Group.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vittas, Dimitri, 2002. "Policies to promote saving for retirement : a synthetic overview," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2801, The World Bank.
    2. Srinivas, P.S. & Whitehouse, Edward & Yermo, Juan, 2000. "Regulating private pension funds’ structure, performance and investments: cross-country evidence," MPRA Paper 14753, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Vittas, Dimitri, 2000. "Pension reform and capital market development -"feasibility"and"impact"preconditions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2414, The World Bank.
    4. Impavido, Gregorio & Musalem, Alberto R. & Vittas, Dimitri, 2002. "Contractual savings in countries with a small financial sector," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2841, The World Bank.
    5. Jeffrey Frankel, 2014. "Mauritius: African Success Story," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth, pages 295-342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.
    7. Sanjeev Sobhee, 2009. "The economic success of Mauritius: lessons and policy options for Africa," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 29-42.
    8. Didier Blanchet, 1996. "La référence assurantielle en matière de protection sociale : apports et limites," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 291(1), pages 33-45.
    9. Bampinas, Georgios & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2016. "Hedging inflation with individual US stocks: A long-run portfolio analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 374-392.
    10. Butler, Monika & Teppa, Federica, 2005. "Should You Take a Lump-Sum or Annuitize? Results from Swiss Pension Funds," CEPR Discussion Papers 5316, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel Henderson & Romain Houssa, 2014. "Significant drivers of growth in Africa," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 339-354, December.
    12. Jahan Ara Peerally & John Cantwell, 2011. "The Impact Of Trade Policy Regimes On Firms' Learning For Innovation From Suppliers," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(01), pages 29-68.
    13. Demarco, Gustavo & Rofman, Rafael & Whitehouse, Edward, 1998. "Supervising mandatory funded pension systems: issues and challenges," MPRA Paper 16348, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Vittas, Dimitri, 1998. "Institutional investors and securities markets : which comes first?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2032, The World Bank.
    15. Queisser, Monika & Vittas, Dimitri, 2000. "The Swiss multi-pillar pension system : triumph of common sense?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2416, The World Bank.
    16. Bütler, Monika & Huguenin, Olivia & Teppa, Federica, 2004. "What Triggers Early Retirement? Results from Swiss Pension Funds," CEPR Discussion Papers 4394, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Vittas, Dimitri & Iglesias, Augusto, 1992. "The rationale and performance of personal pension plans in Chile," Policy Research Working Paper Series 867, The World Bank.
    18. Aaditya Mattoo & Devesh Roy & Arvind Subramanian, 2003. "The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and its Rules of Origin: Generosity Undermined?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(6), pages 829-851, June.
    19. Ryan Saylor, 2012. "Probing the historical sources of the Mauritian miracle: sugar exporters and state building in colonial Mauritius," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(133), pages 465-478, September.
    20. Barrientos, Armando & Boussofiane, Aziz, 2001. "The Efficiency of Pension Fund Managers in Latin America," Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working papers 30696, University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3033. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.