Introduction
As it enters its forty-second year as the workers’ retirement and short-term insurance fund, the National Insurance Scheme is facing one of its most serious crises ever. For several years during the Burnham Administration which set up the Scheme in 1969, its surplus funds were treated it as a source of cheap borrowings by the Government. I recall first looking at the finances of the Scheme with trade unionists Lincoln Lewis and Nanda Gopaul in the mid-to-late eighties and our shock at seeing all the investments in long-term, low-interest (5%) government paper when the inflation rate was considerably higher. Now, with seemingly more investment freedom, the Scheme is actually doing worse, partly a measure of the absence of quality investment opportunities in the economy.
In the context of its current travails, it is more than ironic that its 2009 annual report tabled belatedly in the National Assembly along with its 2008 report,