Romania’s private pension funds, pillars two and three, reached net assets of EUR 4 billion at the end of June 2014, with 6.5 million individual accounts. The average return of the private pension funds was more than 12 percent in the last year, according to data released by the Romanian Pension Funds' Association (APAPR).

The eight mandatory private pension funds (Pillar II) reached net assets of EUR 3.77 billion, 43 percent higher than at the end of June 2013, due to the contribution increase at the beginning of this year, but also due to the profits resulted from the investments made in this period. Starting 2014, the contributions for mandatory pension funds for Romanian employees increased to 4.5 percent of the gross wage.

Since they were launched in May 2008, the mandatory private pension funds received total contributions of some EUR 3 billion from 6.16 million participants. They made profits of about EUR 770 million from investments, with an average yearly return of 11.4 percent.

The ten optional pension funds (Pillar III) reached 330,000 participants and cumulated net assets of EUR 210 million, by end-June, 2014. Asset growth compared to June 2013 was 34 percent.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com