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Members of the Fiji National Provident Fund will have to wait longer than usual if they want to know the financial status of the fund in 2008.
The FNPF is still yet to release its 2008 annual report, expected to detail its health for its financial year ended June 2008.
“We will let you know when it is released,” was all that FNPF CEO Aisake Taito would say when Fiji Live asked him about the issue.
The delay of the fund’s 2008 annual report has been a subject of some public discussions lately, with critics questioning the fund’s transparency amidst sweeping changes that have been made in its managements recently.
There are expectations that investment income would further drop during the year, as FNPF had repatriated most of its offshore investments by then, which were all held in local banks and government papers.
A portion of its funds was also put into a number of hotel projects which failed to perform or yield returns.
FNPF members also experienced a similar delay with the 2007 annual report, which was only released in January this year.
In it, the FNPF accounts were prepared without the accounts of two subsidiaries - Yatule Beach Resort and Natadola Land Holdings - which relate to its newly opened Intercontinental Resort Fiji in Natadola.
FNPF’s auditors KPMG had stated that it was unable to determine the impact of that to the pension fund’s financial accounts.
In 2007, FNPF experienced a 42.7 percent drop in investment income from F$240.04 million in 2006 to F$138.08 million, attributed to the “abnormally high capital gains and foreign exchange gains” experienced in 2006 when most of FNPF’s offshore investments were liquidated.
The Fund has also yet to release results of its 2009 financial year which ended June 31, 2009.
