In its budget request for fiscal year 2010, the Board of Trustees of the Retirement Trust Fund said, “The ratio is approximately $48 in benefit payment for every $1 lost in contribution revenue due to retirement.”
As contributing members retire, their contributions cease and they become pensioners. This causes contributions to decrease and benefit distributions to increase.
So for Fiscal Year 2010, the Board is requesting a total of $8,215,000 for its operating budget. Last year, it had a total of $7,748,133 actual budget and a fund balance of $301,552.
The Board said that this appropriation will temporarily “halt monthly drawdown of trust assets under investment for one year and give invested funds time to recover from the most recent global financial crisis in recent months.”
They have already withdrawn $720,000 from investment to cover benefits for the last three months of the current fiscal year and anticipate another drawdown of $275,000 cover benefits for January.
The proposed figures for fiscal year 2010 are based on the trends in fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
In a letter to President Johnson Toribiong, the Board requested that the president consider their budget request in the supplemental budget proposal to the OEK.
