GIPF in a tight spot

THE Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF) finds itself between a rock and a hard place in implementing the Cabinet directive to suspend its new N$3,4 billion Unlisted Investment Programme.

GIPF chief executive Primus Hango told The Namibian that they had already signed agreements committing GIPF to disburse funds to some of the beneficiaries identified.The fund’s board of trustees is scheduled to meet a Government delegation led by Prime Minister Nahas Angula next week to iron out some of the issues around the Cabinet directive to freeze the new programme that is to replace the now infamous Development Capital Portfolio through which GIPF lost N$660 million.Hango said the meeting would discuss Cabinet’s decision and to map out a practical way forward in implementing the directives. ‘We are not at loggerheads with Cabinet,’ Hango said, stating that the meeting will not be a confrontational one. Sources in the know however stated that the board was going to try and convince Government to relax its decision to indefinitely freeze the investment programme because GIPF had already signed agreements committing the funds to some of the projects to be bankrolled. Hango said no new agreements had been signed since the Cabinet directive and the GIPF had not yet disbursed funds but he would have to approve funding to those projects for which agreements had been signed.The said meeting is also expected to discuss whether the GIPF would have to inform the companies it had signed agreements with that they were putting the project and the agreements on hold. The decision to freeze the Unlisted Investment Programme was announced two weeks ago by Cabinet amid mounting public pressure for Government to take action on the GIPF’s failed Development Capital Portfolio.The decision was taken after several heated meetings involving Government and GIPF stakeholders. Last month Cabinet grilled GIPF trustees for more than four hours on the DCP. A week later it was reported that Cabinet had held lengthy and heated deliberations on the DCP and GIPF. The Cabinet discussion was followed by a meeting between President Hifikepunye Pohamba, some of his senior ministers and union leaders. At the meeting the unions communicated resolutions made at the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) congress last month, which resolved that the management and trustees of the fund should be replaced. The NUNW congress also resolved that a presidential commission of inquiry must be set up to thoroughly probe the DCP.A week after the said meeting Cabinet decided to freeze the new Unlisted Investment Programme and gave Prime Minister Angula the responsibility of appointing an auditing firm to conduct a forensic audit into the DCP.Last week Friday, workers held a meeting to set in motion a planned mass protest do get Government to speed up the forensic audit and the recovery of the money lost through DCP projects.

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