Fund to keep positive credit rating

NASFUND is confident of maintaining a positive credit rating for its members this financial year, chief executive officer Ian Tarutia, pictured, told a regional employer conference in Port Moresby yesterday.
“Whilst we will continue to concentrate on paying our members their rightful entitlements, we are watching the trends and putting into place some measures so that there is a positive balance in what we receive and what is paid out,” Tarutia said.
“We believe that the environment that we are operating in is relatively the same.
“This year we will aim to deliver a positive crediting rate as we did for 2016 year.
“We’ll continue to focus on service delivery across all our operations and client services.”
Tarutia noted that the 7.25 per cent credit rating for 2016 represented a 3.3 per cent increase over the 4 per cent that was declared in 2015. He also appealed to the members to save for longer term after retirement.
“Remember that your superannuation is for the long run,” he said.
“It’s not a bank account, it’s not a temporary passport but for the long run.
“It’s there so that when you can’t work after reaching retirement age or you’ve done the hard yards, then you have a good pool of money to ensure that your life after normal employment are there for you.”
He said previous years were challenging given the global economic downturn and the local economy also did not have any large project after the PNG LNG project.
“After the completion of the LNG project, there was no new project, to drive employment, to drive demand in goods and services and of course effects of the global environment.
“We did not see any new large scale investments especially in our private sector outside of what government was spending on infrastructure.”