Labor funds post year-to-date gains in Q1 despite March losses

Taipei, May 4 (CNA) Taiwan's labor funds rose in the first quarter by more than NT$400 billion (US$12.66 billion), despite record monthly losses in March due to global financial volatility, the Bureau of Labor Funds said Monday.

In March, the labor funds lost NT$378.7 billion, the largest monthly drop on record, amid headwinds in the global financial markets after war broke out in the Middle East, said the bureau, which manages the funds.

The decline was greater than the previous record loss of NT$319.82 billion in March 2020, which was due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the bureau said.

Nonetheless, the labor funds recorded NT$434.4 billion in gains in the first quarter of this year, as the March losses were offset by massive gains in the first two months of the year, according to the bureau.

The gains in the January-March period translated into a 5.76 percent rate of return, the data showed.

The bureau said that 57.05 percent of its first-quarter investments were made overseas, while the remaining 42.95 percent were in the domestic market.

As of the end of March, the combined value of the funds managed by the bureau -- the Labor Pension Fund, the Labor Retirement Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund, the Employment Insurance Fund, and the Wage Arrears Payment Fund -- stood at NT$8.19 trillion, according to the data.

The Labor Pension Fund, launched in 2015, recorded the highest asset value of NT$5.43 trillion in the first quarter, with a rate of return of 5.47 percent, the bureau said.

The Labor Retirement Fund, which has been in place since 1984, had about NT$1.10 trillion in assets as of the end of March, with a rate of return of 9.83 percent for the three months, the bureau said.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Public Service Pension Fund said Monday that its funds recorded NT$66.98 billion in gains in the first three months of the year, equal to a rate of return of 5.33 percent.

Amid the geopolitical uncertainty in the first quarter, the MSCI World Index fell 3.20 percent, and the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index dropped 1.07 percent, while the Taiwan Stock Exchange's benchmark index, the Taiex, rose 9.53 percent.