After 10 years of existence, the Agency for Supervision of Fully-Funded Pension Insurance (MAPAS) will become a regulatory body independent from the government and will be under the parliament’s competence.

The Minister of Labour and Social Policy Spiro Ristovski said at Saturday’s press conference that the need of operational independence was imposed due to the successes and results that MAPAS achieved in the past decade and in its functioning it should be independent from political influence and business interferences.

The new status of MAPAS is regulated by law changes which became effective on Aug. 8 after parliament adopted them. MAPAS will be led by a council consisted of five non-party members – three professionally engaged in the work and two independent experts, which should be established in a deadline of 90 days.

“The results from the previous period in the functioning of the second pension pillar show success and growth of funds both related to the number of members and management of funds. Mandatory pension funds have more than 312.000 members and funds amounting to 19 billion Denars, or around €310 million, which represents 3.5% from the GDP”, Mr. Ristovski said.

The director of the Agency for Supervision of Fully-Funded Pension Insurance (MAPAS), Bulent Dervisi said that the most important activity of the agency is the IPA project which is being conducted with foreign consultants since Feb. 2011 and will last until the end of 2012. “The project’s main goal is strengthening the institutional and supervisory capacity of the agency for bigger transparency and stability of the pension system, development of the IT and research capacities, technically well-trained staff, implementing risk-based supervision practices”, he said.

This will help us to easily achieve of our mission of providing safer retirement days for the members of the pension funds, Dervisi said.