The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T (NIBTT) paid out $6.5 bil­lion in ben­e­fits, while col­lect­ing $4.74 bil­lion in con­tri­bu­tion in­come in its fi­nan­cial year end­ed June 30 2024, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, told Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

That left T&T's so­cial in­sur­ance provider with a deficit of $1.75 bil­lion, which was fund­ed by NIBTT's in­vest­ment port­fo­lio.

The fund­ing of the NIBTT's 2023/24 deficit re­sult­ed in its in­vest­ment port­fo­lio de­clin­ing by $950 mil­lion, or 3.38 per cent, to $27 bil­lion as at June 30, 2024.

"The de­cline in the port­fo­lio's mar­ket val­ue was main­ly at­trib­ut­able to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $370 mil­lion in un­re­alised loss­es as well as the with­draw­al of $1.96 bil­lion to fi­nance the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS) deficit dur­ing the fi­nan­cial year," said Im­bert. He made the state­ment to Par­lia­ment on the re­port of NIBTT's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed June 30, 2024. The re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Im­bert said as at June 30, 2024, about 70 per cent of NIBTT's port­fo­lio was in­vest­ed in T&T, while the re­main­ing 30 per cent more or less com­prised in­vest­ments held in North Amer­i­ca.

He said the eq­ui­ty por­tion of NIBTT's in­vest­ment port­fo­lio stood at $17.06 bil­lion or 63 per cent of the to­tal fund size at the end of the fi­nan­cial year 2024.

"The Fund's lo­cal­ly list­ed eq­ui­ty port­fo­lio un­der-per­formed its bench­mark, the ALL T&T In­dex re­turn of 5.16 per cent, by 385 ba­sis points, due to the port­fo­lio's over­weight po­si­tion­to spe­cif­ic as­sets. How­ev­er, the in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ty port­fo­lio con­tin­ued to be the main dri­ver of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund ad­vanc­ing by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23.97 per cent," said Im­bert.

"The NIBTT's fixed in­come port­fo­lio de­creased by 18.40 per cent or $1.62 bil­lion to $7.18 bil­lion with a weight­ed av­er­age pur­chased yield to ma­tu­ri­ty of 5.06 per cent as at June 30, 2024," Im­bert said.

He said the NIBTT's in­vest­ment hold­ings record­ed a net un­re­alised in­vest­ment loss over the pe­ri­od of $370 mil­lion dri­ven by un­re­alised loss­es in eq­ui­ty in­vest­ments of $297 mil­lion and fixed in­come of $78 mil­lion.

"Con­verse­ly, to­tal re­alised in­vest­ment in­come amount­ed to $1.26 bil­lion, with its pri­ma­ry dri­vers be­ing div­i­dend in­come from lo­cal eq­ui­ties of $411mil­lion, gains from the sale of for­eign eq­ui­ty hold­ings in the sum of $370 mil­lion and in­ter­est in­come from lo­cal bonds amount to $343 mil­lion," said Im­bert.

He said con­tri­bu­tion in­come col­lect­ed for the year end­ed June 302024 was $4.74 bil­lion, a to­tal of $348 mil­lion above the bud­get­ed es­ti­mate of $4.4 bil­lion. In­come from penal­ties and in­ter­est amount­ed to $13 mil­lion, an in­crease of $1.3 mil­lion from the $11.7 mil­lion col­lect­ed in 2023.

Oth­er high­lights of NIBTT's fi­nan­cials

* New em­ploy­ers reg­is­ter­ing with the NIBTT in­creased by just 0.55 per cent to 1,647 from 1,638 in 2023. The ac­tive em­ploy­er pop­u­la­tion in­creased by 1.05 per cent to 19,341 in 2024, from 19,140 in 2023.

* Em­ploy­ee reg­is­tra­tion showed 25,575 ap­pli­ca­tions for pro­cess­ing in the fi­nan­cial year were de­ter­mined. Of these, 19,830 or 77.5 per cent were new in­sured per­sons added to the data­base in 2024, an in­crease of 296 or 1.5 per cent when com­pared with 19,534 new reg­is­trants in 2023.

* Ben­e­fi­cia­ries to­talling 226,618 re­ceived a to­tal of $6.5 bil­lion in ben­e­fit pay­ments, an in­crease in ex­pen­di­ture of 5.45 per cent over the $6.16 bil­lion record­ed in the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od.

* Long-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries in­creased by 3.49 per cent to 202,608 per­sons in 2024, from 195,859 per­sons in 2023. Pay­ment to this group, to­talled $6.23 bil­lion or 95.9 per cent of the to­tal ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture record­ed in 2024. That was an in­crease of 5.99 per cent over the $5.88 bil­lion of the to­tal ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture record­ed in 2023.

* Re­tire­ment pen­sion ac­count­ed for the largest com­po­nent of long-term ben­e­fits, to­talling $5.2 bil­lion or 83.45 per cent of long-term ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture.

* Short-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries de­creased by 14.6 per cent from 23,292 in 2023 to 19,877 in 2024. Pay­ments to short-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries to­talled $193.5 mil­lion or 2.98 per cent of to­tal ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture. This rep­re­sents a de­crease of 3.4 per cent from $211.9 mil­lion in 2023.