SINGAPORE: Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC posted its highest returns since 2015 for the latest financial year, but said it remains cautious in an uncertain macro environment due to a protracted COVID-19 pandemic and stretched valuations.
In its 2020/21 annual report released on Friday (Jul 23), GIC said its 20-year annualised real rate of return came in at 4.3 per cent for the year ended Mar 31. This is up from 2.7 per cent in the previous financial year and the highest since 2015 when real returns hit 4.9 per cent.
The 20-year metric – a primary indicator of GIC’s investment performance – is a “rolling” return where years are dropped and added as the computation window moves. For instance, the figure for FY2020/21 represented the average annual return of GIC’s portfolio between April 2001 and March 2021, with global inflation taken into account.
The spike in the real rate of return was partly due to the “poor year” in FY2000/01, caused by the dot-com crash, being dropped out of the 20-year window, said GIC’s chief executive officer Lim Chow Kiat during an online press briefing ahead of the report’s release.
The past year also saw a strong rebound in risk assets, such as global equities, on the back of policy actions and the development of COVID-19 vaccines, he added.
“Almost all the risk assets have done really well and even those assets which (had direct) negative impact from the pandemic actually held up reasonably well. So you had a lot of assets performing and that, I guess, contributed to the good performance of the portfolio,” Mr Lim told reporters.
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Wah shiok!
ReplyDeleteBack of envelope estimation shows GIC gained about $200B in last FY.
Added to the $75B gain by Temasek, this means S'pore earned back 5X what it spent from the reserves.
On another note, speech by MAS MD indicates govt is thinking about becoming more like other developed countries: wealth taxes including bringing back inheritance tax & possibly capital gains tax, minimum wage, unemployment or re-employment insurance.
Smol must be spinning in his new apartment! :P
Spur,
DeleteWell, can't say I'm surprised. Any doubts about the slow rising tide of socialism creeping into big daddy's thinking were dashed with the introduction of CPF Life.
The irony is big daddy started out as social democrats. Then realised socialism is fun until you ran out of other people's money to spend...
Pivot to full blown capitalism.
Now pendulum swinging to the other side... Oh well!
When we've run out of ideas, its not surprising we'll try to be like others. Swim in a school, hunt as a pack, graze like a herd...
Others have; we have.
Others do; we follow.
In real life, I'm not sure keeping up your neighbours/colleagues is working well for the individual...
And I though most successful people are those who stand out from the crowd? To be different?
That's why no parents believed a word when that clown said every school is a good school.
Even communist China don't consider all their universities equal.
If we consider conservation of energy or conservation of energy, when there is a gain, there must be a loss somewhere to make it balance.
ReplyDeleteMAS, GIC and TEMASEK all did well since inception. Wondering then where or who are the negatives….