Contributions to the Personal Equity and Retirement Account, a voluntary retirement savings program, climbed 30 percent to P329.55 million in 2022 from P253.35 million in 2021, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Tuesday.
It said the number of PERA contributors also went up by 16 percent to 5,100 in 2022 from 4,382 in 2021.
About 3,600 employed individuals contributed P223.71 million to the fund as of end-2022, followed by 721 overseas Filipino workers and 785 self-employed individuals who invested P60.58 million and P45.25 million, respectively.
The BSP launched PERA in 2016 under Republic Act 9505. It said that as of end-December 2017, PERA funds reached P37.15 million with 583 contributors.
PERA is a voluntary retirement savings program that supplements state-based pension plans and employer-sponsored retirement plans.
It is considered a superior retirement savings option mainly because of the tax benefits it offers to individual contributors, such as tax exemptions on earnings from PERA investments; a 5-percent tax credit on the PERA contribution that can be used to pay for national income tax liabilities; and a tax-free distribution on qualified withdrawal of PERA investments.
A potential contributor only needs a tax identification number to invest in PERA. By the time the contributor reaches the age of 55 years old and an investment period of at least five years, he or she can redeem the PERA investment free of taxes.
The BSP started the end-to-end digitalization of the PERA environment in September 2020. As an online marketplace, the digital PERA facilitates greater convenience and efficiency by enabling Filipinos to open PERA accounts, choose among different accredited PERA products and settle PERA transactions electronically using their mobile phones or other digital devices.