Central committee on financial crises

October 02, 2008 5:53 AM

There will be a central-committee meeting in the Parliament of the Netherlands Antilles this Thursday at 15:00 about the possible local consequences of the international – especially American – financial crisis that prevails these days.

Also the question to whether the Antilles must take precautionary measures in order to prevent a serious attack on the own financial system – and if yes, what kind of measures – will come up for discussion.

When FK-Parliament members Glenn Camelia and Nelson Navarro requested this meeting in writing on September 19, they also pointed out the strategic-philosophic issue that ‘less government – more market action is also not everything’ and that the government must never stay too much in the background.

Minister Ersilia de Lannooy (Finance, PNP) told the Chairman of Parliament recently that she wants to discuss the matter of the international financial crisis with Parliament, if possible this week. She doesn’t want to let this subject wait till she’s back from her next week business trip. The idea is that other than De Lannooy, also the minister of Economy, the Bank of the Netherlands Antilles, the Finance Department, and the General Pension Fund of the Netherlands Antilles deliver a clarification contribution to Thursday’s committee meeting.

NRC Handelsblad reports that ‘a disaster quarter goes by for the investors of the Dutch pension funds’. That’s when it’s really going to start for employees, employers, and retirees: The Dutch pension funds have trouble indexing the employees- and retirees’ pensions due to investment losses.
That appears from for example the return figures in the first six months of the big pension fund ABP, Pension-fund Care and Well-being, and Pension-fund Metal and Technique.

The pain of the pension funds was especially in the first quarter, when they suffered big losses on their share-investments. On balance, they booked a small investment gain in the second quarter. The depreciation in currency values dominated again in July. The financial position of these three funds is indeed better than the minimum that supervisor the Bank of the Netherlands requires. The rule of thumb is that the ratio between the value of the investments and that of the pension obligation is minimal 125 percent. This so-called ‘covering degree on market value’ was 132 percent at ABP at the end of June; 135 percent at the Pension-fund Metal and Technique, and 143 percent at pension-fund Care and Well-being, the former PGGM.

(Source: National Newspaper Amigoe)

30 September, 2008