This is the second time the fund is making the call as its first attempt failed to draw any proposal.[break]
On June 26, the fund first published a notice seeking a consultant who could develop the entire social security system from scratch, suggest how one-percent tax to be collected for the scheme would be utilized, derive formulas to compute premium rates for different schemes and come up with implementation plans.
But the call did not receive a single response within the deadline of July 11.
“We are now planning to place the same advertisement in national dailies seeking proposals from qualified Nepali consultants (firms),” Kebal Prasad Bhandari, executive director of the fund, told Republica, informing, a formal decision in this regard would soon be made by the SSF´s board of directors.
The fund´s previous attempt to hire a consultant had failed as it had sought for experts who had experience on actuarial modeling. This means the fund was seeking people who had graduated in actuarial science - a discipline that applies mathematics and statistics to assess market opportunities and nature of risk, and compute premium rates of insurance schemes - which Nepal has a dearth of.
Earlier, Khem Prasad Baral, consultant at Nepal Insurance Company, who has an experience of over two decades in the country´s insurance sector, had told Republica that only two Nepalis have taken the course. “But both of them are not in the country,” he said. “Because of this shortage, insurance companies bring actuaries from India whenever need arises.”
Against this backdrop, it is highly likely that the fund´s second attempt to hire a consultant will also receive cold response from the market.
“In that case, we will have no option but to call on international consultants to participate in the bidding,” Bhandari said.
The Social Security Bill, which has been approved by Ministry of Labor and Employment, had identified nine core schemes to be rolled out over the years, which includes, unemployment, disability, maternity, medical, dependent and old-age benefits.
Currently, the fund has been collecting one percent tax from basic salaries of workers of the formal sector to launch the schemes. In future, it is planning to channel 10 percent of workers´ basic salary, which is currently being deducted to contribute to the provident fund, into the fund.
Likewise, employers have also pledged to contribute 20 percent of employees´ basic salary to the fund, which includes money contributed to provident fund and extended as benefits. In this manner, the fund is planning to collect 31 percent of salary of every employee to roll out social security schemes.
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