The National Council for Social Security Fund announced Monday the total assets of China's Social Security Fund (SSF), which totaled 170.8 billion yuan (20.8 billion US dollars) at the end of 2004.

Xiang Huaicheng, chairman of the council, said that 75 percent of the total the assets include 114.9 billion yuan (14 billion US dollars) in funding from the central government. The fund increased by 38.3 billion yuan (4.67 billion US dollars) year-on-year.

The pension assets include 26.1 billion yuan (3.18 billion US dollars) in revenue from the sale of shares in state-owned enterprises. This accounts for about 17 percent of the total.

The assets also includes 12.9 billion yuan (1.57 billion US dollars) in revenue from lottery sales, about 8 percent of the total.

The total assets include investment as banking deposits (66.7 billion yuan, or 8.13 billion US dollars), bond investment (74.4 billion yuan, or 9.07 billion US dollars), equity investment (11.3 billion yuan, or 1.37 billion US dollars), and stock market investment (18.4 billion yuan, or 2.24 billion US dollars).

The chairman said total realized revenues of the fund reached 4.27 billion yuan (520 million US dollars) in 2004 with an investment yield rate of 3.1 percent, up 0.39 percent over the previous year.

On its investment strategies for this year, Xiang said the council will work to improve its investment returns while giving top priority to risk control.

"Our risk control policy remains unchanged, that is there will be no net investment losses in each of the coming five years while striving to raise investment returns," said Xiang.

The ratio of stock market investment to total assets, which stood at 11 percent, was raised to about 15 percent for this year. The ratio will increase to about 20 percent if the fund council was approved later this year to investment overseas by the central government, said the chairman.

Total capital available for investment this year will be at least 51.4 billion yuan (6.26 billion US dollars), and up to 17.8 billion yuan (2.17 billion US dollars) will be used to invest in the stock markets and some 26 billion yuan (3.17 billion US dollars) will be invested in products with fixed returns, he said.

The fund was created in 2000 as part of China's effort to build up a national social security network to cope with the growing needs of its ageing population.

Source: Xinhua