STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES
MAGDA WIERZYCKA: Time for public servants to stand up against the looters
Reports that the Treasury is eyeing the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) as an easy source of funding for bankrupt state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as South African Airways, Denel, PetroSA and Eskom seem to have come as a surprise to many. The GEPF is the largest pension fund in SA, providing pensions to most state employees. With 1.2-million contributing members and 400,000 pensioners and beneficiaries, it has R1.6-trillion in assets. That money is there to provide pensions to a lot of people for many years to come. Unlike our SOEs, it is fully funded, which means the fund owns enough assets of sufficient value to meet its future liabilities — paying the pensions of its members. Although the GEPF is supervised by a board of trustees, the management of its assets is outsourced to the state’s asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC). Apart from the GEPF, the PIC manages assets for some other government-affiliated funds. It has its own board of directors, a CE...
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