WILLEMSTAD - Last week, on July 30, the General Pension Fund of Curaçao (APC) presented its annual report 2020. The chairman, director and deputy director, Philip Martis, Evelyn Kruithof-Bor and Ramiro Griffith, gave the presentation to the Minister of Finance Javier Silvania.
This once again meets the requirement of the National Ordinance APC to adopt the annual accounts and the annual report of the previous year before 1 August of the current calendar year and present them to the Minister. In addition to reporting on the figures, the annual report also looks back at the most important developments that affected the pension fund in the year 2020.
The year 2020 will go down in history as a particularly difficult year, in which the Covid-19 pandemic has predominated with a far-reaching impact on the global economy and Curaçao is no exception. In recent years, the Curaçao economy has been confronted with major challenges and persistent uncertainties regarding the survival of the refinery, the economic situation in Venezuela, the lack of an optimal air connection, the lack of activities in the port sector, which means that the island has experienced little to no economic growth.
In March 2020, 'draconian measures' were taken by the government to prevent an outbreak of the Coronavirus, including a "lockdown" of the island and the virtual shutdown of flight traffic. This was a major blow to the island's already fragile economy.
The booming tourism industry came to an abrupt halt, economic activity was halted pending developments related to the pandemic. The acquisition of the refinery was delayed by global developments in the petrochemical industry. Many companies were forced to lay off staff, which caused the unemployment rate to rise enormously.
Due to the further deterioration of the economy, the financial institutions on the island, including APC, have imposed a moratorium on interest repayments for the year 2020 for their relations that have been most and directly affected in the conduct of their business activities. The moratorium was initially only for 3 months, but was extended until the end of December 2020 given the circumstances.
For APC, the year 2020 was dominated by the establishment of APC Bank, which took over PSB Bank a month later in May 2020. A lot of hard work has gone into setting up the Bank in these challenging times of digitalization, strict regulation, and risk management that the financial sector is going through. APC Bank and its stakeholders are working tirelessly on the strategy for building a strong bank of the future. The processes and set-up take a lot of time to guarantee a solid bank that the customers can count on. During 2020, the fund expanded its real estate portfolio with the acquisition of the Zeelandia Office Park and the well-known Plaza Hotel at the auction. The new construction in Asteroidenweg was also resumed.