The government has initiated the process of instituting a separate 'Pension Accounting Office' to deal with the pension-related issues under a centralized management.
This new government body is likely to come under the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General who is already working to develop an organogram for the planned entity, officials told the FE.
Around 50 thousand to 60 thousand government employees take retirement every year and, as such, become eligible for state pension.
Up until recently, the system was cumbersomely decentralised with various government agencies processing the pensioning of various segments of these employees.
For example, the Ministry of Public Administration was responsible for managing the pensions of the retirees coming from the Administration Cadre while the Ministry of Education is responsible for handling the pensions of the retirees from Education Cadre.
Recently, however, the government is increasingly looking to centralise this highly complex and decentralised system.
In the latest national budget, all the pension-related allocations for various ministries have been brought under the budget of the Finance Division. The total allocation stands at around Tk 194.81 billion.   
However, to further institutionalise this centralisation process, the Finance Division recently came up with a proposal for setting up a separate Pension Accounting Office.
"Apart from ensuring increased centralisation of the system, establishing a separate PAO would help to ensure better transparency and accountability," Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Finance Md. Muslim Chowdhury told the FE recently.
Officials concerned said the government is currently looking for 'parametric reform' in its pension-management system.
To that end, an automated pension database has already been developed by the government while the automation of pension processes and use of electronic fund transfer in pension payment is also underway.
Establishing a separate PAO would especially be helpful in pension management when the government would gradually move to contributory pension scheme for its employees, insiders observed.  
Apart from PAO, the government also plans to establish a separate pension cell within the Finance Division for resolving various pension- related complaints.
Such separate cell would work to resolve different pension complicacies including those related to family pension or 'retired but not pensioned' type of cases, officials said.        
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Source: The Financial Express