Fund looking to grow portfolio

The National Business

THE Comrade Trustee Services Ltd (CTSL) is looking at acquiring and developing land assets to help grow its portfolio and member balances, an official says.
Chief executive officer Charlie Gilichibi said on Friday the fund would grow in two ways:

  • Organic growth/cash flow directly coming from members fortnightly contributions; and,
  • How to make the balance sheet work harder like acquiring assets and growing the savings of members within the fund.

“In terms of the average member balance in the industry, our members have the highest member balances of K70,000 on average per member,” Gilichibi said.
“One of the other fund has K30,000 and the other fund has around K8,000.
“So the projects that we are doing include Toea Homes Ltd, and other projects in terms of acquiring land assets and developing those assets.
“From K70,000, let’s try and bring it up to K100,000, K150,000 or possible bring it up to K200,000 over the next five years if we set the foundations right this year.
“Then, next year, and the following year, would set a very good platform to grow member assets within the fund.
“If you look at the past 10 years compared to other bigger funds, CTSL has not been performing very well. So that’s a challenge to us and we really appreciate working with our members through the PNG Defence Force commander (Maj-Gen Gilbert Toropo) and likewise the stakeholders like Bank South Pacific for us to realise the dreams of our members to grow their assets and grow their individual member balances.”
CTSL statutory manager Sitiveni Weleilakeba said there were three genuine sites in Port Moresby and in Lae as well.
Weleilakeba said phase one of stage one had seen 30 houses built with 128 lots fully titled and serviced under the Toea Homes Ltd.
He said the second phase would see them putting forward 225 lots over the next couple of months.
“We are now currently looking at land to be transferred from the Defence Force to us,” he said.
“There are three genuine sites in Port Moresby.
“We are also looking at Lae as well. There is a big piece of land that we’re looking at acquiring shortly, specifically for our members.”