Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

The lat­est Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund re­ports, pub­lished Fri­day, show Gov­ern­ment with­drew US$510.78 mil­lion from the Fund over six months.

The re­ports cov­er the pe­ri­ods Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber 2025 and Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber 2025.

The Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber re­port shows the Fund earned a pos­i­tive re­turn, even af­ter Gov­ern­ment with­drew mon­ey.

It said the HSF re­turned 4.54 per cent for the quar­ter, beat­ing its bench­mark re­turn of 3.35 per cent.

The Fund’s val­ue moved from US$6.3229 bil­lion at the end of June 2025 to US$6.3413 bil­lion at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

The re­port said: “Dur­ing the quar­ter, US$260.78 mil­lion was with­drawn from the Fund un­der Sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act (2007) for the fi­nan­cial year 2023/2024.”

It said the Fund sold as­sets from the US Core Do­mes­tic Eq­ui­ty man­date to meet the with­draw­al.

The same re­port showed the Fund re­mained out­side its ap­proved in­vest­ment range.

The Fund’s pol­i­cy al­lows each man­date to move on­ly plus or mi­nus five per cent from its ap­proved tar­get. But the re­port said the Fund’s as­set al­lo­ca­tion had moved above that lim­it.

It showed the US Core Do­mes­tic Fixed In­come man­date had the largest un­der­weight po­si­tion at 10.84 per cent, while the US Core Do­mes­tic Eq­ui­ty man­date had the high­est over­weight po­si­tion at 9.72 per cent.

The Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber re­port showed an­oth­er with­draw­al.

It said the HSF re­turned 2.69 per cent for that quar­ter, al­so beat­ing its bench­mark re­turn of 1.99 per cent.

But the Fund’s val­ue fell from US$6.3413 bil­lion as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, to US$6.2549 bil­lion at De­cem­ber 31, 2025.

The re­port said: “In ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act (2007), US$250 mil­lion was with­drawn from the Fund dur­ing the quar­ter.”

It said the Fund sold as­sets from the US Short Du­ra­tion Fixed In­come man­date to meet that with­draw­al.

By De­cem­ber 31, the Fund re­mained out­side its ap­proved in­vest­ment range.

The re­port showed the US Short Du­ra­tion Fixed In­come man­date stood at 13.86 per cent, be­low its 25 per cent tar­get.

It al­so showed the US Core Do­mes­tic Eq­ui­ty man­date stood at 28.30 per cent, above its 17.50 per cent tar­get.

The De­cem­ber re­port said mar­ket move­ments and with­draw­al ac­tiv­i­ty cre­at­ed a “high­er un­der­weight al­lo­ca­tion to fixed in­come se­cu­ri­ties” and a “cor­re­spond­ing in­crease to the Fund’s over­weight ex­po­sure to eq­ui­ties.”

The re­port said the Cen­tral Bank con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor the Fund’s as­set ex­po­sure and pro­vide reg­u­lar up­dates to the HSF Board of Gov­er­nors.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a com­ment from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo on what the with­drawals were used for, why the Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber with­draw­al was list­ed for fis­cal 2023/2024, and whether the HSF Board ap­proved the Fund re­main­ing out­side its ap­proved in­vest­ment range. He did not re­spond by press time.