The amendments to the Pension Funds Act that are set to exit the Ministry of Finance in the fall would allow pension funds to invest their money into longer-term instruments such as infrastructure and energy projects, the daily Postimees said.
Estonian ministry wants to ease rules for pension fund investments
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The investment targets that the planned changes would open up for pension funds include wind farms and gas networks in energy, and potentially also investments in precious metals, which have been illegal for pension funds so far.
«Since the system of funded pensions has been in effect already for more than ten years it's appropriate to review certain restrictions and change them if there are grounds to do it,» said Thomas Auvaart, head of the department for financial markets at the Ministry of Finance.
Fund managers speaking to the newspaper said the restrictions had to be changed because the framework put in place more than a decade ago was becoming increasingly obsolete.
The board chairman of the Estonian Fund Managers Association, Danske Capital CEO Silja Saar, said the proposals filed by the association were based on global context and pension funds' need to find better possibilities for dividing their investments.
The bill is due to embark on the round of approvals in the fall and take effect probably in the first half of 2014.