The Chief Executive of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Mr. Hayford Atta Krufi has called for a national dialogue concerning a possible review of the retirement age in the country.

Currently, under the National Pension Act, which provides for both full and partial pension, full pension workers must have attained 60 years of age (55 years if working under hazardous conditions) with at least 180 months (15 years) of contributions.

However, an early pension is also available to workers from the age of 55 years with at least 180 months (15 years) of contributions.

According to Mr Atta Krufi, Ghana’s retirement age of 60 years could result in losses in the workplace in both human and financial resources.

"If you train an expert and the person can give a lot more at 60 and you ask them to go home, they will go into some consultancy and they may even come back to the same business and charge you higher."

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, The Business Edition, he made reference to countries in Europe who periodically revise the retirement age.

“In Europe, a lot of countries within the European Union have revised their pension ages and UK, its almost like every year they revise it because the women live longer."

He added that the situation is worsened by the fact that the rate of retirement is not comparable with the rate of hiring.

“There are people who have a lot of experience at age 60 and then they leave, and then also hiring people to come on board is also not commensurate with the rate at which people are leaving.”

Mr Atta Krufi, therefore, advised that the country start the conversation on a possible revision of the retirement age to help the nation benefit from the expertise of its well-experienced employees.

He, however, believes that the implementation of this revision should be phased as we "cannot just do a blanket increase in the pension age".

“So when you’re having the conversation, it’s not just all of a sudden everybody is going to retire at 64 or 65 or 66, but it is phased so those who are born at a certain age will retire at a certain age and then those who are born later will retire at a certain age and then gradually, we will have that increase in retiring age. That is how it was done in Europe and in the UK. And I think that as a nation we need to look at that,” he explained.