Strong stewardship of the people’s fund

“My heart is to protect the fund and not to be politically correct.

President Rodrigo Duterte witnesses the signing of a memorandum of agreement aimed at easing payment of teachers’ loans between the Government Service Insurance System president and general manager Jesus Clint Aranas and Education Secretary Leonor Briones. MALACAÑANG PHOTO

The state pension fund continues to be on a roll. Since corporate tax lawyer Jesus Clint Aranas was appointed as president and general manager of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in November 2017, the agency has steadfastly pursued its mandate of taking care of its fund pool.

Aranas had been barely a year in his seat when news of ejectment cases broke out. His office had issued such cases on properties deemed “non-performing.”

These cases include the alleged non-payment of back rentals of two property lots used as part of the auxiliary operations of Philippine Plaza Holdings, Inc. The other case involves the ejectment of a branch of a Chinese restaurant inside the Cultural Center of the Philippines Compound in Pasay City. Both cases are still ongoing.

“My heart is to protect the fund and not to be politically correct,” Aranas told the Daily Tribune in an interview last month. “It’s a steep learning curve because nuances in handling securities, insurance and social pension are very different. In the past, you’re the one imposing taxes. This one, we have a different component. We are very profit-oriented but revenue-generating for the fund so it remains healthy,” he explained.

Aside from actively pursuing “non-performing” assets, the GSIS also undertook measures to take care of its pensioners.

The agency has uncovered P1.6 billion losses from bogus pensioners. Among the measures to recover funds from which its 1,720, 684 active members stand to benefit, the GSIS had reactivated a safety net program that detects the authenticity of its membership. The Annual Pensioner’s Information Revalidation or APIR is similar to the ARAS or the Annual Renewal of Active Status which, he said, was stopped in 2011.

APIR was implemented in March. To date, there are 338,220 pensioners who need to revalidate their status under APIR. As of April 19, only 78,032 or 23.07 percent of the pensioners were revalidated.

Another program the agency is focusing on is a loan program for teachers. He shared that the agency is looking at helping out the teachers as they hold the largest share in GSIS.

Out of the pie, the largest membership or owners of the fund are employees of the Department of Education (DepEd), which comprises almost 50 percent of the contributors.

GSIS and the DepEd signed an agreement on 16 April that will facilitate the payment of loans of teachers and other personnel of DepEd from private lending institutions through a loan facility from GSIS.

The GSIS Financial Assistance Loan offers members up to P500,000 in loans, provided their take-home pay does not go lower than P5,000 after their monthly obligations have been deducted. The loan is payable in monthly installments for six years at 6 percent interest rate per annum computed in advance.

“The ultimate idea is who owns the fund? Not the government, but the contributors who someday will become our pensioners. Then we have to protect the fund. It’s the concept of stewardship. So we have to identify leakages,” Aranas said.

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