GIC has released their latest annual report giving us an idea of their performance of the government’s reserves.
In their press release, it was reported that the five, ten and twenty year annualized performances were 6.3%, 7.4% and 7.2% respectively.
However, note that all these figures are measured in USD terms. If measured in SGD terms, the numbers would be much, much lower.
I couldn’t find any mention of the SGD performance in the GIC report. To me, this is not good from a transparency point of view (That figure can be easily calculated by just finding out the annualized rate of depreciation of the USD versus the SGD in the same period).
As a Singaporean saving my money for retirement, I will want to know the returns of my savings in SGD terms, never mind the fact that I have been investing my savings in a globally diversified portfolio. Because that is the bottomline that will ultimately determine how much money I will have for retirement.
If I had held SGD at home in my biscuit tin can over the last twenty years, I would have been able to achieve a nice performance return if I choose to measure it in USD terms.