Senator Imee Marcos on Sunday cited the urgency of replacing a deactivated pension fund for military and uniformed personnel even as she called for a Senate probe to clarify the financial status of the Retirement and Separation Benefits System (RSBS) and its ability to reimburse members’ contributions.
Marcos noted that the MUPs’ salary contributions used to earn at a higher interest rate than most banks can offer.
“No pension fund has yet replaced the RSBS which stopped collecting member contributions since it shut down in 2016 due to gross mismanagement,” said Marcos, chairperson of the Senate committee on economic affairs.
Marcos said the RSBS interest payments also keep growing, in effect depleting the retained resources of GOCCs (government-operated and -controlled corporations).
Although RSBS has said it remains debt-free and far from bankrupt, Marcos cited findings by the Commission on Audit that the pension fund had overstated its total assets by P2.54 billion and Ph63 billion in the two years prior to its deactivation.
The COA also found discrepancies in RSBS statements on membership contributions in 2017 and 2018, with unreconciled balances of P10.24 billion and Php 9.26 billion, respectively.
For the past five years, Marcos said old and newly recruited MUPs could have made more contributions and earned more interest if a new pension fund was promptly set up.
“The longer we wait to replace RSBS, the more we deprive our MUPs and their families of earnings they could have already accumulated,” Marcos said.
To establish a new pension fund, Marcos urged caretakers of the RSBS to liquidate all its assets as soon as possible, citing that it already missed its goal to do so in April, based on the five-year timeline set after its deactivation.