Lesotho Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

REFUSAL, AND THE REFUSAL IS THE ANSWER: LESOTHO HAS NO CONTRIBUTORY NATIONAL SOCIAL-INSURANCE SCHEME COVERING PRIVATE-SECTOR EMPLOYEES. There is no national provident fund, no national pension contribution, no unemployment-insurance contribution, no national health-insurance contribution, no maternity or sickness fund and no state workmen's-compensation fund levy. For an ordinary private-sector employee there is NO statutory payroll deduction other than PAYE, and NO statutory employer social-insurance contribution. An engine that returns a percentage for Lesotho is fabricating it — and the figures that circulate (typically "5% employee / 10% employer") are OCCUPATIONAL PENSION SCHEME RATES set by contract or collective agreement, not statute. They must never be presented as statutory. WHAT EXISTS INSTEAD, AND UNDER WHAT LAW: 1. RETIREMENT SAVING IS VOLUNTARY AND OCCUPATIONAL, NOT STATUTORY. Private occupational pension and provident schemes are established by employers and regulated under the Pension Funds Act, 2019 and by the Central Bank of Lesotho. Membership, contribution rates and vesting are matters of contract between employer and employee or of a collective agreement. There is no statutory minimum rate, no statutory ceiling and no national fund. Rates must be taken from the individual scheme's rules. 2. PUBLIC OFFICERS HAVE THEIR OWN SCHEME, AND IT DOES NOT REACH THE PRIVATE SECTOR. The Public Officers' Defined Contribution Pension Fund receives monthly contributions from the Government of Lesotho as sponsoring employer and from qualifying public officers, calculated as a percentage of monthly salary. It is confined to public officers. Its rates are not national rates and are irrelevant to a private-sector payroll. 3. THE OLD-AGE PENSION IS UNIVERSAL AND NON-CONTRIBUTORY. Lesotho pays a flat monthly old-age pension under the Old Age Pension Act, 2005 to citizens who reach the statutory qualifying age, funded entirely from general government revenue. Entitlement turns on citizenship, age and residence, not on any contribution record. It generates no payroll line whatsoever. 4. OCCUPATIONAL INJURY IS DIRECT EMPLOYER LIABILITY, NOT A FUND. Under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1977 the employer is liable to compensate a worker for injury, occupational disease or death arising out of and in the course of employment, on the scale set by the Act and its regulations. There is no state compensation fund financed by a payroll levy, so there is no assessment rate and no percentage to serve. The Workmen's Compensation Regulations, 2025 updated the benefit caps and the minimum payout with effect from 1 February 2025 — note that those are BENEFIT figures, not contribution figures, and an engine must not convert them into a payroll cost. 5. SEVERANCE IS THE STATUTORY SUBSTITUTE FOR AN UNEMPLOYMENT BRANCH, AND IT IS A TERMINAL PAYMENT. Under the Labour Act, 2024 an employee who has completed more than one year of continuous service with the same employer is entitled on termination to a severance payment of two weeks' wages for each completed year of service. It is not payable to an employee dismissed for misconduct. Nothing is paid in monthly; the liability crystallises at termination and belongs in the employer's provisioning model, never on the payslip as a contribution. 6. THERE IS NO NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE. Medical cover is private and voluntary. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none, and none possible — there is nothing to vary. No district or council levies any payroll or social-insurance charge. WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS RECORD: a Consolidated National Social Security Bill for Lesotho has been drafted and independently evaluated, covering the legislative framework for a proposed national scheme, its governance, the establishment of insurance funds and their financing. IT HAS NOT BEEN ENACTED. The Labour Act, 2024 — Lesotho's most recent major labour reform, in force from 2 April 2024 — consolidated employment law without creating a contributory social-security fund. If the social security Bill is passed, this record moves from a refusal to a priced branch list. Until then current.value is null because there is no rate, not because the rate is unknown, and effective_from is null because there is no commencement date for a scheme that does not exist. Because Lesotho has been close to legislating for some years, re-verify against the National Assembly's Bills list on each update cycle rather than assuming stability. SOURCING CAVEATS, STATED PLAINLY: this refusal rests on a negative finding — that no instrument establishing a contributory national scheme for private-sector employees exists — corroborated by the absence of any such fund in Lesotho's own institutional landscape (the only statutory contributory arrangement is the Public Officers' Defined Contribution Pension Fund, expressly confined to public officers) and by the continued existence of a National Social Security Bill still awaiting enactment. The Labour Act, 2024 severance formula, the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1977 employer-liability structure, the 2025 regulations' effective date and the non-contributory character of the old-age pension are stated from the published descriptions of those instruments rather than from a verbatim reading of each section; none of them generates a contribution, so nothing in this refusal turns on their precise figures. The qualifying age for the old-age pension is not stated here because it was not verified against the Old Age Pension Act, 2005 itself and carries no contribution consequence.

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/ls/social-contributions

Other Lesotho series: CBL Rate (Central Bank of Lesotho policy rate) · VAT standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Sectoral minimum wages (basic minimum wages by sector and category) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Company income tax rate (standard, non-manufacturing) · Withholding tax rates · Statutory late-payment interest · Personal income tax rates, threshold and credit

The same figure elsewhere: Mali · Mauritius · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · all 34