Public-Private Partnership Center

OVERSEAS PLACEMENTS worth some $670 million that are being repatriated will be reinvested in local markets and infrastructure ventures, the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) yesterday said.

“Once all our investments under the global investments program (GIP) are in the country, we plan to put… [these] in the stock market, bond market… real estate investment trusts, the government’s public-private partnership program and the central bank’s special deposit accounts,” GSIS Robert G. Vergara told reporters.

The state pension fund in 2008 opened the GIP, a facility intended to generate additional income to meet future claims and benefits. Of the total $1 billion allocated, some $600 million was invested in markets overseas via foreign fund managers such as Pimco.

Mr. Vergara said the GSIS was repatriating its overseas investments because it failed to generate the 8% return set when the program was first implemented.

“It is not clear now how investing abroad would give GSIS a good return… given all the inflation issues in China and India and the geopolitical problem in the Middle East and the debt crises in the US and the euro zone,” he said.

Some two-thirds of the $670 million has been returned to the country, Mr. Vergara said.