Funds managed by the Ministry of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Funds posted solid year-to-date returns despite limited gains of NT$1.34 billion (US$42.09 million) in August, compared with stronger gains of NT$86.4 billion in July.
The funds’ accumulated gains, which reflect overall increases in the value of assets and investments, totaled NT$887.1 billion in the first eight months of the year, up NT$1.34 billion from the end of July, the bureau said on Tuesday.
Global financial markets encountered headwinds in August as weaker-than-expected US manufacturing and job data for July raised fears over a possible recession, it said.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
Such volatility was assuaged by stronger-than-expected July retail sales data and US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual economic policy symposium on Aug. 23 in which he hinted that the “time has come” for a rate cut cycle, the bureau said.
The TAIEX in August rose by 0.31 percent, while Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI World Index increased by 2.54 percent and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index went up by 1.64 percent.
However, in the first eight months of the year the TAIEX soared by 24.19 percent, while the MSCI World Index gained 15.97 percent and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose by 9.44 percent.
The bureau said that 56.90 percent of the state-owned labor funds were overseas investments while 43.10 percent were domestic investments as of the end of August.
The combined value of the funds managed by the bureau, including the Labor Pension Fund, the Labor Retirement Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund, the Employment Insurance Fund and the Arrear Wage Payment Fund, was about NT$6.796 trillion as of the end of August.
Based on that value, the gains in the first eight months of this year represented a rate of return of 14.25 percent, the bureau said.
The value of assets in the new Labor Pension Fund, launched in 2015, totaled NT$4.43 trillion at the end of August, the highest of any fund, and its rate of return from the start of the year to the end of August was 14.08 percent, the bureau said.
The Labor Retirement Fund, which has been in place since 1984, had about NT$1.04 trillion in assets as of the end of August, with a rate of return of 16.71 percent over the same period, it said.
Meanwhile, the Public Service Pension Fund recorded NT$130.55 billion in gains in the first eight months of this year, with a rate of return of 14.56 percent, the Bureau of Public Service Pension Fund said on Monday.
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