The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) says its prudent investment decisions are yielding results, as it continues to work to improve contributors' benefits.
To this end, it has also frozen new real estate investments in the short to medium term until SSNIT's portfolio has been rebalanced.
Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, the Director-General of SSNIT who disclosed this during a media engagement held in Accra said SSNIT's Investment Guidelines were also being reviewed in line with the new asset allocation policy and emerging trends.
Giving a breakdown of SSNIT's investment performance, he said, the Trust's investment portfolio registered a 5.77 per cent real return in 2017 as against -5.93 per cent in 2016.
This performance he said was above the external actuarial target of 3.25 per cent adding that the total investment assets of the Trust as at September 2018 was GH¢9.38 billion.
This, Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said represents a growth of 2.4 per cent in asset value compared to the Sept 2017 value of GH¢9.16 billion and an increase of 1.4 per cent compared to the December 2017 value of GH¢9.25 million.
"The Marketing Department has been tasked to intensify marketing activities to sell off real estate housing units as and when they are completed without waiting for the total completion of the projects," he said.
He said "The Trust Hospital Company Limited (a facility fully owned by SSNIT) since its incorporation in 2010 has declared a dividend of GH¢597,979. Another investee company, Labadi Beach Hotel, also declared a dividend of GH¢1 million for 2017. This amount was a huge increase considering that the company booked a loss in 2016."
The Director-General said the Trust's Treasury Policy had been revised explaining that now SSNIT places funds with commercial banks and other financial institutions at treasury bill rates plus a minimum of three per cent.
He said SSNIT as of September this year, saved GH?20 million by deleting 6, 452 pensioners from its payroll, with an additional four million Ghana cedis plus, expected by the end of the year.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang explained that the action was taken in an exercise with the banks, which monitored dormant accounts over time and terminated those it deemed 'ghost pensioners'.
On the internal measures to cut down cost, he said, a significant reduction in foreign travels and accommodation expenses, had resulted in only GH? 1.57 million being spent out of the budgeted GH? 8.34 million.
Additionally, the Director-General said:" A recent renegotiation of agreements of some ICT infrastructure, support and license fees has resulted in a savings of $ 8.52 million dollars to the Trust, about half of this a recurrent expenditure.
"A newly signed Service Level Agreement for three years is saving the Trust two million US dollars compared to the previous Maintenance Contract. Also an amount of $ 15, 281,176.87 and GH? 16,091,579.46 are to be claimed as refunds from one of the IT solution vendors," he said.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said the Trust would continue its drive to increase its membership and announced that it would rope in the low income earners in the informal sector with a tailor-made programme.
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