Romania's mandatory pension funds see 26% increase in assets in 2017

The mandatory pension funds in Romania increased their assets by 26.3% in 2017, to almost RON 40 billion (EUR 8.55 billion), according to the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF). They invested most of the money in state bonds, namely RON 24.4 billion or 61.4% of their assets. Investments in listed shares totaled RON 7.84 billion, or close to 20% of the assets, while RON 3.49 billion (8.8% of the assets), were held in bank deposits. The seven mandatory pension funds that operate on this market had close to 7 million participants at the end of last year, but only 4.05 million of them had contributions aid in their accounts in October 2017. Mandatory private pension funds received contributions representing 5.1% of the gross wages of their participants in 2017. In 2018, the contribution will drop to 3.7%, which will be partly compensated by higher gross wages after the social contribution transfer from employers to employees. editor@romania-insider.com