NPPF

The National Pension and Provident Fund (NPPF) administers Bhutan’s formal pension schemes — the civil-service pension and certain corporate-sector pensions. Approximately 47,000 Bhutanese are covered: about 39,000 civil servants plus armed-forces and corporate-scheme members.

The pensioned population is, at most, about 10% of the country’s working-age cohort. The other 90% — farmers, traders, drivers, small-business owners, tour operators, hotel staff, monks — have no formal pension. This structural gap is one of the reasons the civil-service queue is rational from the graduate’s perspective: the civil-service prize includes “buying old age.”

See also: Paradox #19.