GSIS’ assumed burden

Man at the Market

Jesse E.L. Bacon II

02/09/2010

Factually, contributions deducted from the monthly pay of every government employee, official or rank and file alike, are not enough to cover for all the benefits due them individually upon reaching retirement age, including their monthly pension.

Enabling the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) to meet its obligations given the disparity between the member’s contribution and the benefit due him is the burden that the leadership of the pension fund has assumed for the members’ welfare and benefit. Truthfully, the burden that the GSIS leadership had placed on its shoulders is not an easy one but a heavy yoke that they can not just pass on to anyone.

This is also true even of private entities engaged in the business of securing the future benefits, mostly financial, of their clients through insurance policies or other forms of securities.

Of course, the GSIS leadership has a variety of options on how to carry out the burden it has assumed for itself. Limiting its options would be fatal to the future of the pension fund itself. An able exercise of this mandate would result in a healthy and robust fund base whose actuarial life extends several years from the present such as in the present where it is projected to last almost half a century from today.

The biggest legacy that a GSIS leadership could leave behind is an extended actuarial life of the fund. To realize this legacy, the current GSIS leadership led by lawyer Winston Garcia, the fund’s president and general manager, first and foremost, purged the list of members and pensioners to weed out the bogus ones. The move produced a list of members and pensioners whose integrity is unassailable.

Imagine the savings earned out of this move now that only real and living members and pensioners receive actual benefits from the agency. The current GSIS leadership also expanded its investment horizons by not only limiting itself in investing its funds in local investment portfolios but even in foreign portfolios, a first in GSIS. This move undeniably yielded for the agency so much income, thus making the agency the most profitable among government financial institutions.

The state-owned pension fund also continues to unload its non-performing assets acquired through foreclosures of unpaid mortgages to beef up its fund base, thus extending even longer its actuarial life. In this regard, the GSIS recently unloaded its acquired asset, the four-story La Marbella Hotel in Davao City to the tune of P30 million to real estate developer Woodridge Properties Inc.

GSIS adopts the policy of unloading its non-performing assets for two-pronged reasons. First, it is able to beef up its fund base through the proceeds of these sales, at the same time affording the agency to rid it of these idle assets. Second, by selling these non-performing assets the GSIS is able to help in pump priming the economy such as the sale of its Davao property that is now under development by its new owner for more productive purposes.

Obsession makes one illogical

Spending billions of pesos of your hard earned money just to convince the electorate to vote for you so that you can serve them is very illogical from all angles of rational thinking. But this is exactly what Sen. Manuel Villar is doing. And since this is very illogical, the only rational reason the electorate can give to this is that Villar is so obsessed to succeed Arroyo. And since his motivation to become President has now been transformed into an obsession, this concretely manifests his dangerous tendency to hang on to power if ever elected, just as the others before him who were as obsessed as him to become President, Ferdinand Marcos and Arroyo herself.

As the presidential campaign officially starts today, my only hope is that Villar will be unmasked for what he really is and the most probable path he will tread if he succeeds in fooling the people to vote for him -- which is that of being a fascist dictator just for him to hang on to power. That he is so obsessed to annex the presidency can be seen through his wild spending of the money that could be part of the P6.2 billion that his peers want him to return to the government coffers relative to the ethics charges leveled against him in connection with the controversial C-5 road extension project where he was found guilty of violating several laws of the land.

(Send your reactions to jelbacon@yahoo.com)

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