The to­tal net as­set val­ue of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund as at June 30, 2024, was US$5.76 bil­lion, a 2.32 per cent de­clined com­pared to US$5.89 bil­lion as of March 31, 2024.  

This was re­port­ed in the HSF’s quar­ter­ly in­vest­ment re­port for the pe­ri­od April 1 to June 30, 2024, which was pub­lished on the web­site of the Min­istry of Fi­nance yes­ter­day. 

It said of this to­tal, the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio was val­ued at US$5.75 bil­lion, while the re­main­ing por­tion was held in op­er­at­ing cash ac­counts to meet the day-to-day ex­pens­es that arise from the man­age­ment of the Fund.  

The re­port in­di­cat­ed that dur­ing the quar­ter, a to­tal of US$209.56 mil­lion ($1.41 bil­lion) was with­drawn from the Fund un­der sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act (2007) for the finan­cial year 2022 / 2023.  

“As­sets with­in the US short du­ra­tion fixed in­come man­date were liq­ui­dat­ed to meet the oblig­a­tion,” ac­cord­ing to the quar­ter­ly re­port. 

Sec­tion 15 (1) of the HSF Act states, "Sub­ject to sub­sec­tions (2) and (3), where the pe­tro­le­um rev­enues col­lect­ed in any fi­nan­cial year fall be­low the es­ti­mat­ed pe­tro­le­um rev­enues for that fi­nan­cial year by at least 10 per cent, with­drawals may be made from the Fund as fol­lows, whichev­er is the less­er amount: (a) ei­ther 60 per cent of the amount of the short­fall of pe­tro­le­um rev­enues for that year; or (b) 25 per cent of the bal­ance stand­ing to the cred­it of the Fund at the be­gin­ning of that year.

For the quar­ter that end­ed June 30, 2024, the re­port said the HSF’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio re­turned 1.38 per cent, while its bench­mark in­creased by 0.77 per cent. Strong US eq­ui­ty mar­ket gains and the Fund’s rel­a­tive­ly high­er al­lo­ca­tion to the US core do­mes­tic eq­ui­ty man­date helped to dri­ve per­for­mance. This was aug­ment­ed by pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions from the fixed in­come man­dates and in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ties. 

The re­port high­light­ed that the HSF out­per­formed by 61 ba­sis points when com­pared with its strate­gic as­set al­lo­ca­tion (SAA) bench­mark. 

“Rel­a­tive as­set al­lo­ca­tion po­si­tion­ing and ex­ter­nal man­agers’ ac­tive in­vest­ment de­ci­sions drove ex­cess re­turns. The HSF’s over­weight al­lo­ca­tion to eq­ui­ties and cor­re­spond­ing un­der­weight po­si­tion in fixed in­come was pos­i­tive for per­for­mance. In ad­di­tion, the Fund benefit­ted from the strong out­per­for­mance of ex­ter­nal man­agers’ strate­gies, most no­tably in the non-US core in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ty and US core do­mes­tic fixed in­come man­dates,” the re­port fur­ther stat­ed. 

In Sep­tem­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that the cur­rent val­ue of the HSF stands at US$6 bil­lion.   

He said in June 2022, the val­ue of the HSF was US$4.7 bil­lion, which was at­trib­uted to in­sta­bil­i­ty in the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem at that time.  

"Now two years lat­er, be­cause of pru­dent man­age­ment, the val­ue of the HSF has in­creased to US$6 bil­lion, an in­crease of US$1.3 bil­lion,” the fi­nance min­is­ter said.  

The HSF's 2023 an­nu­al re­port said that the fund stood at US$5.39 bil­lion at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023, a 14.4 per cent in­crease com­pared with the US$4.71 bil­lion at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022.   

In the sum­ma­ry of the an­nu­al re­port, which was avail­able in May 2024, HSF chair­man Ewart Williams said the Fund re­turned 10.59 per cent for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, "par­tial­ly re­cov­er­ing from the steep loss­es dur­ing the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year, when the Fund de­clined 16.52 per cent."