CPF: Lost more than $100 billion over the years in Bad Investments?

I refer to Phillip Ang’s article “GIC has been speculating with our CPF” (TR Emeritus, Nov 14).

It states that “It is not acceptable that CPF’s $264 billion investments have remain undisclosed for more than 3 decades.”

Cannot be transparent because … ?

-  Singapore’s total sum of foreign reserves is secret. Some of the reasons given as to why Singapore’s foreign reserves cannot be transparent were:

Singapore’s Minister of State for Finance: “You asked how much reserves we have. I’m sorry – I am not able to give you that answer. There are many, many people who are interested in how much we have. It has nothing to do with not wanting Singaporeans to know. It’s only if we go public with you, a lot of other people will know”.  (March 15, 2008)

Singapore’s finance minister: “People do want to know, there is curiosity, it is a matter of public interest. That is not sufficient reason that there is curiosity and interest that you want to disclose information” ( August 18, 2009).

No data is available?

According to the book “Banking, Finance & Monetary Policy in Singapore”, by Luckett, Schulze and Wong, “Unfortunately, GIC operates in extreme secrecy and does not circulate its annual reports to outsiders.No data is available to assess its financial position or to analyse the breakdown of investment types and their returns”.

Beating around the bush?

For example, GIC said in its annual report published in March 2013, that it had significantly recovered its losses from the previous year.

No figures were given, but the comment came in its report for the year.

Imagine you ask your stockbroker,”how much money did I make last year?” – and his reply is “You have ‘significantly’ recovered your losses from the previous year, but I can’t give you any figures”!

What would be your reaction? How would you feel?

I find it somewhat puzzling and perhaps rather strange that the custodian of Singapore’s reserves tells Singaporeans that we did “significantly” well, but sorry no exact figures for you.

Since its “significant”, why not give the figure?By the way, since we also don’t know what exactly were the previous year’s losses, how do we figure out how “significant” it was?How about an improved format?

May I suggest that the GIC’s annual report be re-written or highlighted with parentheses (my emphasis) as follows:

“In September 2012, GIC said it had recovered more than half (how much exactly) of its losses (how much) then (when – for what period (s) precisely). GIC’s portfolio lost 20 per cent in Singapore dollar terms (how come losses are in S$, whereas returns are in US$?) in the financial year to March 2009, compared to the previous year”.

So, what was the return in S$ terms?

Has the GIC always reported its returns in the past in US$ terms only?

Can you imagine Bank Negara or the Bank of England reporting its returns in US$, without any mention in RM or sterling terms respectively?

Fund managers, sovereign wealth funds, etc, typically always report returns in annualised rates of return.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with reporting returns in “nominal average annual rate of return” or “adjusted for inflation”, the annualised rate of return should not ever be omitted altogether.

As to “This is the third year that GIC with investments valued at over US$100 billion or about S$132 billion is releasing its annual report”, what does “over US$100 billion” mean? – US$101, 150 or 200 billion?

How much exactly did we lose?