TBILISI, September 12 – Georgia’s pension fund has passed 10 billion lari in total assets, with roughly 30% of that amount coming from investment gains, the fund said Friday.
According to the Pension Fund, 7 billion lari of the total came from contributions by participants, employers and the state, while 3 billion came from investment returns. The value of its assets totals around 3.8 billion USD with today’s exchange rates.
The fund has operated since January 1, 2019. Over that period, it said its cumulative nominal return reached 113.8%, while the inflation-adjusted real return was 40.5%. On an annualized basis, those figures were 10.4% nominal and 4.5% real.
The fund said that by this measure of real returns, Georgia ranked fourth among OECD countries.
A day earlier, on Thursday, the fund released a more detailed update on the performance of its three investment portfolios.
The dynamic, or higher-risk, portfolio recorded a cumulative nominal return of 50.9% between August 2023 and August 2026, with a real return of 34.2%. The balanced portfolio returned 46.2% nominally and 30% in real terms, while the conservative portfolio returned 41.4% nominally and 25.7% after inflation over the same period.
The fund said the stronger performance of the dynamic and balanced portfolios was largely linked to their higher exposure to international equities.
In August alone, the dynamic portfolio rose 1.96%, the balanced portfolio 1.57% and the conservative portfolio 1.18%. The fund said recovering international stock markets and positive contributions from local fixed-income investments helped performance during the month, while a roughly 0.54% strengthening of the Georgian lari against the U.S. dollar reduced returns from foreign-currency assets.
All three portfolios also posted positive real returns in August after taking account of monthly inflation of 0.40%.
As of August 31, 1.769 million people were enrolled in Georgia’s pension scheme. A total of 35,793 people had received accumulated pension payments, with 185.2 million lari paid out to them.
