GSIS has sufficient funds, says Garcia

State run pension fund Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has sufficient funds to support its members until 2040, a 12-year extension from the previous actuarial life of 2028, a top official said.

An actuarial life is the mortality rate of the pension fund, the period by which it can service all its members’ claims and benefits.

GSIS said they will not stop making improvements in order to further extend the life of the fund.

"Our target is to increase our actuarial life further to 2100. With the way things are shaping up, we may reach this target sooner than we expect," GSIS president and general manager Winston F. Garcia said.

"We have stemmed the actuarial decline. We managed to do this despite consistently implementing pension increases," Garcia said.

Garcia credits the actuarial life extension to good investment decisions.

Aside from this, good investments resulted in the increase of the fund’s total assets by 17 percent.

The pension fund’s investments pushed its assets to P412.6 billion as of end September from P354 billion during the same period the previous year.

"Right now, we may be the most profitable government owned and controlled corporation and we are on target to hit our profit target of P40 billion for 2006," Garcia said.

The total investments of GSIS increased to P275.8 billion in the first nine months of the year from P264 billion a year ago.

"We knew that for our profit to grow the way it has grown for the benefit of our members, we had to concentrate on blue chip companies and we did," Garcia noted.

From January to September, the pension fund’s investment income increased to P13.6 billion from P9.8 billion last year. GSIS credits the 39-percent growth to their ability to manage their funds efficiently.

"We are reaping the rewards of being an active player in a very bullish market," said Garcia.