Have the increased resources spent at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) helped produce high long-term returns for government employee pensions ? Unfortunately, the data published by the PIC make this difficult to judge. Averaging across years for which comparable estimates are available, today’s post shows that the PIC has more or less matched the returns of its benchmark over time. However, the total amount spent on non-executive director remuneration is more than four times higher now than in 2008 in real terms. The amount spent on executive directors has not grown nearly as much. As we showed in an earlier post, the average employee cost at the PIC started out at similar levels as other premier public sector institutions in South Africa, but have grown faster than at the SARB, Treasury or Stats SA and is now higher in level terms. The PIC’s asset base has risen a lot, although a large share of assets is also externally managed. As a result, the ratio of staff to assets under management has been relatively stable since 2012, although it has risen if externally managed funds are excluded.
