By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

RETIREMENT Fund Administrator Mark Aguon says the agency cannot continue depending on the returns from its international market investments due to the government’s failure to make timely remittances.
Public Law 15-15 allows the government to suspend its monthly employer contributions to the local pension system until Sept. 2008.
Autonomous agencies are still required to pay their employer contributions but because these are not enough to fully fund the more than 2,000 retirees’ regular pension checks, the Fund regularly withdraws from its investment portfolio to cover the shortfall.
“Either they give us the money or we continue to withdraw from our investment portfolio,” Aguon told Variety in an interview.
The government is supposed to remit at least $500,000 every pay period to the Retirement Fund as part of its share of employees’ retirement benefits.
As of the end of March, the Fund’s investment portfolio was valued at about $470 million, up by about 2 percent compared to the previous month.
Aguon said if the market wasn’t good, the Fund would have suffered tremendous financial setbacks with its constant withdrawals.
“When the market fluctuates downward and we continue to withdraw, we will be locking in our losses. And this is the scenario that the Retirement Fund and the board wish to avoid. We can’t continue to rely on the market to bail us out,” he said.