The NMI Retirement Fund recorded a significant decline in its market investments last month\u2014a loss of almost $9 million.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Richard Villagomez said the pension program\u2019s investment portfolio was valued at $320.4 million as of May 31, 2011, a big drop from the $329.2 million posted in April 30, 2011.<\/p>\n
Fund records indicate that April saw a positive monthly return of 2.89 percent in its investments compared to a negative -1.28 percent return in May.<\/p>\n
The dismal market performance also dragged down the fiscal year returns from 15.74 percent in April to 14.26 percent in May.<\/p>\n
The Fund\u2019s assets are invested in common stocks, fixed income, hedge funds, and money market. Besides investments in international markets, the Fund\u2019s portfolio also includes local investments: the Member Home Loan Program, investments in Group Health Life Insurance, interest payments on the judicial building loan, and the Commonwealth Government Employee Credit Union.<\/p>\n
The Fund is currently in transition with the adoption of a new asset allocation model and the entry of new money managers. From eight, the agency now has 11 companies handling its diverse portfolio.<\/p>\n
[B]Drawdown[\/B]<\/p>\n
Villagomez also disclosed yesterday that total drawdown\u2014withdrawals from the investment fund\u2014now totals $37.4 million as of June 10, 2011.<\/p>\n
The Fund earlier projected that the drawdown amount may exceed the authorized ceiling of $52.4 million by the end of the fiscal year in September due to the government\u2019s cash-flow problems. Continued delays in the central government\u2019s employer contribution are seen to boost the Fund\u2019s drawdown amount by $800,000 beyond the authorized ceiling.<\/p>\n
The Fund has an average monthly drawdown of around $2.4 million.<\/p>\n
Drawdown funds are used to pay for the pension benefits of members and other obligations. <\/p>\n
In fiscal year 2010, the Fund noted some $14 million \u201csavings\u201d in its projected drawdown as a result of increased contribution from the government and remittance of taxes pursuant to a court judgment.<\/p>\n
Meantime, in its meeting on Rota Friday, the board of trustees deferred any discussion and decision on the long-delayed pension software system.<\/p>\n
The board earlier uncovered that the Fund had already paid over $402,000 for a non-functioning pension software project designed by Express Electronics Ltd. It was initiated in 2008 and has yet to be completed despite being 90-percent paid. The board recently hired a program analyst who uncovered several inaccuracies that may take more time and resources to fix. <\/p>\n
The Fund\u2019s decision whether to pursue the project or not will be based on the program analyst\u2019s final evaluation report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Retirement Fund recorded a significant decline in its market investments last month\u2014a loss of almost $9 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}