Managers attend Nasfund employers’ meet

By LARRY ANDREW
EMPLOYMENT managers of business houses in Lae attended a Nasfund Employers’ Conference last Wednesday.
Speakers at the conference were Nasfund’s chief investment officer David Brown and chief officer member services Charlie Gilichibi and Nasfund Contributors Savings and Loans (NCSL) general manager Vari Lahui.
Brown spoke on Nasfund’s 2017 performance and the outlook for 2018, Gilichibi on member service initiatives and Lahui on NCSL.
Brown said Nasfund embraced the 2017 year knowing that the country was experiencing economic pains on the back of slow economic growth, falling gross domestic product (GDP), lack of new large-scale investments projects outside of Government spending on infrastructure, and foreign exchange rationing. “2017 did not turn out too bad,” he said.
“That is because we focused on this problems early, ending up in fairly good results.
“The net profit for the year was K242 million, which was an excellent result.
“We were able to use that and other reserves within the fund to produce 8 per cent crediting.”
Brown said total membership of the fund had increased by 3.5 per cent to 556,459 from 537,520 members recorded in 2016.
He said there had been an increase of 9.5 per cent in contribution receipts of K493 million from K450 million received in 2016 – which is the highest recorded over the last five years.
In the administrative side of things, Kina had been appointed as fund administrator.
Over the years the net asset value of the fund had grown from K851 million to K4.5 billion.