GEPF Outlines Investment Strategy: A Look at Africa and Beyond

 I think your characterization of the climate is correct and if you look at the results of the G.P.F. it will bear that out both from its global investments but most specifically to the South African ones. Given our science we tend to reflect our returns on the G.P.F. tend to reflect largely how the economy is performing better because we do manage the portfolio in a particular way. If you look at the results last year our returns were actually single digits and at the lower end of single digits. So it took about 4.5% and then a significant recovery this year to where we almost doubled digits and substantially so. So the current investment climate is definitely favorable to the G.P.F.s investments and I presume to other funds as well. So you say the fund is looking a lot better right now. What investments in particular are driving this improved performance in the fund? The best way to answer that question is to understand the G.P.F. and its size relative to the market where we invest in investing. And by and large we invest in the South African economy. So the extent to which we are performing is refractive for the South African economy. And that I think is by and large the indicator of where we currently are at and it's quite good. Which companies are outperforming or which of your investments are doing particularly better than others? Well it's always a difficult one to pick up the ones but I mean the obvious ones that you will talk to. So you will hear people talking about especially in the listed space companies like NARS-PERS. I know everybody is concerned about the size of NARS-PERS. So are we relative to the total fund. But it's been doing very very well for the G.P.F. But by and large even some of the larger South African companies especially in the financial services sector performing very well. What about your investments on the continent? How is that space for you? They are good. We are heavily exposed in Africa especially in West Africa and more specifically in terms of country Nigeria. So the difficulties that the Nigerian economy faced and the West African economies generally faced impacted very very negatively on the G.P.F.s performance last year. And there's been a significant improvement both in terms of West Africa in general but more specifically in countries like Nigeria where there's been a significant improvement in the performance of those economies. And would you be looking perhaps to potentially sort of expand further on the continent? Very much so. I think it's cautiously because it is a very difficult market to be investing in but we're looking forward to increasing our exposure to the continent. And to diversify from what we currently are exposed to most significantly West Africa and to a certain extent East Africa but then to actually look at other parts of the continent not Africa being one of the most interesting ones. And of course closer to home some of our neighbors and Sarek being an area where we would like to invest more. In which sectors? Well in theory you look for sectors that you don't have in the first instance. For instance when we went to Nigeria there was some focus in fuels, fossil fuels, oil more specifically. Also financial services given the size of the market and the extent to which there's still capacity to grow. So some of the sectors like financial services are very very attractive because they are the areas where those countries are sort of South Africa are kind of starting to look at new technologies, fintech more specifically and be much more welcoming of those technologies and higher uptake than you will find in South Africa. So those are the kind of areas that you want to but some of the traditional ones. There's still a lot of things to be done on the continent to do some of the things that we take for granted. I mean our processing for instance could be an area where it's significantly attractive because there's still a lot of scope for the things that we take for granted. From construction the project that one is seeing in terms of investment in the continent in infrastructure means that areas like construction and the value chain that goes with that very very attractive for a South African investor investing on the continent.

The Government Employees Pension Fund, the biggest pension fund in Africa, says 2018 is proving to be a good year for its investments so far. Fifi Peters spoke with the funds Principal Executive Officer, Abel Sithole about the current investment climate and where it was finding value.

GEPF outlines investment strategy 

The Government Employees Pension Fund, the biggest pension fund in Africa, says 2018 is proving to be a good year for its investments so far. 



GEPF outlines investment strategy

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