Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler has declared clean hands on the National Insurance Scheme’s (NIS) investment in the politically divisive Four Seasons project, which has been stalled for three years.
He revealed yesterday in the House of Assembly during debate on the 2012-2013 Estimates Of Income And Expenditure that Four Seasons officials had sought an investment from the NIS and the decision to agree to it was squarely that of the NIS board.
“Government did not tell the investors to go to the NIS, and I did not tell the NIS to invest in the development,” Sinckler declared.
The St Michael North-West Member of Parliament insisted that he gave no instructions to the NIS to invest in Four Seasons and that the board acceded to the investment request from Four Seasons under “certain circumstances”.
Sinckler said he was completely satisfied that the NIS took care of the interests of Barbadian workers who continued to contribute to it.He stressed that Four Seasons still remained a private sector project despite the fact that the current administration guaranteed a $120 million loan from ANSA Merchant Bank in Trinidad and Tobago.
“The project was not a Government project and never was, but it failed on Barbadian soil,” he noted.
Sinckler told the Lower House that the NIS, which was started in 1967 by a Democratic Labour Party administration, was today one of the strongest and well managed pension schemes.
He disclosed that at the end of last month, the fund had $3.8 billion in assets, which represented 40 per cent of the island’s gross domestic product.
He added that last year, the NIS earned $180 million in investment income and of that amount $145 million came from Government.He said that at the end 2011, the NIS had a surplus $234 million and that the pension and social security scheme now had $330 million sitting in commercial banks across the country.
In fact, he said, if the NIS stopped taking contributions from workers it could still pay six to eight months of benefits because it was a “substantially strong” pension scheme, thanks to reforms undertaken by the last administration and continued by the current Government.
In this connection, Sinckler told the House that were it not for an NIS $32 million investment, Hilton Barbados would not be in existence.He said when there were cost overruns on that hotel project, Government went back to the NIS for more financial support.