EDITORIAL: Pule Mabe’s tin ear for pension plunder
To force funds to put pension money into uncreditworthy SOEs, which can’t raise money elsewhere, is to force them to accept lower returns on their savings
You couldn’t have asked for a more tin-eared statement from the mouthpiece of the ANC. At a time when global markets are in freefall, and people’s pension savings are ebbing away thanks to panic over the Covid-19 virus, ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe waded in to suggest yet another ill-conceived line of assault on your savings.Speaking at the Black Business Council Summit, Mabe said: "To address the small and medium enterprise funding gap, there is an urgent need for us to look at the role of pension funds, or more broadly the savings industry, in facilitating financial inclusion and in particular expanding funding to SMMEs and other developmental projects."Mabe won’t have got the deep irony of that statement. The fact is, your pension is largely invested in local equities, through the JSE, which is the obvious avenue through which growing companies raise funding. In a normal world, businesses list on the JSE to get capital, and your pension savings are deployed to fund them, in the exp...
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