By Buertey Francis BORYOR
The Director-General, Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Kofi Osafo-Marfo, has assured of continuous efforts to implement investment policies and strategies to improve returns while managing the portfolio’s risks.
While addressing press at the SSNIT Pension House Conference Room in Accra, he averred that the SSNIT scheme is very generous – offering unique benefits and providing values that no other pension product offers in the country.
“We are committed to ensuring the scheme’s sustainability because it offers the best proposition with respect to pensions in the country. We are going to implement investment policy and strategy that improves returns, and we will continue to do so while managing the portfolio’s risks.
“We are also going to manage our cost to ensure that we are more cost-efficient,” he elaborated.
Clarifying issues concerning Freddie Blay’s assertion of SSNIT refusing his son’s bid of US$I50million- US$200 million he said: “ Spartan Ives Limited- Mr. Freddie Blay’s son’s company did not meet the technical evaluation qualifying mark of 50, and so their financial proposal was returned to them unopened. Therefore, SSNIT had no way of knowing the amount included in the financial proposal.
“SSNIT went through processes as prescribed by the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) for selecting a strategic investor. After selection of bids, the technical proposals from companies were opened first and an evaluation panel reviewed them. The evaluation panel then submitted its evaluation report to the Entity Tender Committee,” he added.
Justifying the company’s sale of a 60 percent stake in each of its six hotels, he noted among other things the move was to improve the company’s financial stability by reducing annual capital injections from the Pension Fund to sustain non-profitable hotels.
