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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
The National Social Security Authority’s equities fund has so far this year outperformed all of the authority’s other investment portfolios, returning 11,47 percent despite the generally depressed equities market.
General manager Mr James Matiza said the company had pre-determined allocations for each portfolio, decided at the beginning of each year, under the two main pension scheme categories.

“At the end of September, overall growth in equity investment of our fund was 11,47 percent. Compare it with our equity investment in FBC since 2009; you see it has grown by 800 percent. So, some have positive and others negative growth,” he said.

The ZSE is down 3,96 percent year-to-date and in Africa is only joined by Nigeria, which is 0,47 percent lower since January. NSSA investments are determined by dynamics in the domestic economy.

NSSA realised its second biggest return on its investment from prescribed assets securities, which yielded 7,89 percent, money market 5,18 percent while support to small enterprises retuned 6 percent.

Mr Matiza said the authority drew 2,65 percent profit from real estate investments and 5 percent from its housing portfolio outlay while 6 percent was achieved from loans to small enterprises.

NSSA had $717 million invested in various portfolios with equities accounting for 25 percent of the outlay under the national pension scheme and 27,5 percent under workers compensation scheme.

Mr Matiza said NSSA had $555,5 million under the national pension scheme and a total of $162 million invested from the workers compensation insurance scheme, giving the total of $717 million.

“What we do is that at the beginning of each year, our economists look at the economy and the (possible) outcomes,” he said.

The authority allocates its collections to the portfolios on this basis. NSSA invests the surplus from the total it collects from workers. According to its results for the year to December 2013, NSSA collected 173 million in 2013, a 27 percent growth on the prior year figure.

Mr Matiza said significantly more investments were this year directed to real estate and money markets to retain value in the wake of sluggish performance of most Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listed stocks.

However, Mr Matiza said money market returns were also weighed down by need to provide affordable funding to local companies, as agreed with Government, to help them turnaround their fortunes.

All NSSA money given to banks for lending to productive sectors of the economy is loaned out at a maximum of 10 percent, Mr Matiza said. NSSA gets 7 percent and banks the balance of 3 percent.

He said under the $162 million workers compensation scheme, 27,5 percent was invested in equities, 7,5 percent in prescribed assets, 30 percent on money markets, 25 percent in real estate, 10 percent in housing while nothing was invested in small entities.

Under the national pension scheme, 25 percent was invested in equities, 10 percent in prescribed assets, 20 percent on money markets, 30 percent in real estate, 10 percent in housing and 5 percent in empowerment projects to boost small to medium enterprises.

Investment income went up 21 percent to $24 million in 2013 while total assets for the last financial year rose 17 percent to 1, 038 billion on growth in investments and financial assets classified for sale.