The Turkish government has accumulated about TL 490 million ($140 million) in as short a time as six months thanks to automatic participation in the Individual Pension System (BES), Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek announced.

The deputy prime minister recalled the fact that automatic participation, which has successful examples in the world, was integrated to the existing private pension system in January this year. Şimşek said that, in this context, companies in the private sector, with a thousand or more employees, were included in the system in the first stage.

He noted that 80 percent of public servants were in favor of interest-free fund. Meanwhile, the minister also said that the amount of funds accumulated by the public servants in the system was TL 170.3 million. Şimşek indicated that the number of participants in the individual pension system has reached 6.8 million people and that the amount of fund has reached approximately TL 69 billion with the contribution of the government. He said the government has accumulated funds of nearly TL 490 million thanks to the automatic participation system in a period as short as six months.