HFC Unit Trust declares over GH¢2,000,000 profit for 2010

Accra, June 28, GNA - The management of HFC Unit Trust on Tuesday declared a net profit of GH¢2,791,687 for 2010 as against GH¢1,825,309 in 2009.

The Fund size also increased from GH¢21.52 million in 2009 to GH¢26.93 million in 2010, representing a growth of 25.15 per cent.

Mr Peter Larbi-Yeboa, General Manager of HFC Investment Services Limited, a subsidiary of HFC Bank (Ghana) Limited and managers of the Trust, announced this at its 17th Annual General Meeting in Accra.

He attributed the good performance to the significant reduction in market rates, additional investments and attraction of new clients who continued to express confident in the premier collective invest scheme.

"In addition, our prudent investment strategy also paid off due to the active realignment of the HFC Unit Trust Portfolio to obtain better returns on our investments. These developments all together contributed significantly to the growth of the fund value in 2010," he said.

Mr Larbi-Yeboa said the period under review experienced a significant decline in the rates obtained on money market instruments due to declining inflation and reduced borrowing by government from the public.

That, he said, was necessary to reduce general borrowing rates to boost economic activity, and that had significantly influenced the fund, which was primarily a money market fund.

Mr Larbi-Yeboa said in response to those developments, the Fund Manager had engaged an active rebalancing and realigning strategy of the portfolio to achieve good returns on the funds, and 2011 holds a lot of good prospects for the Ghanaian economy with the emerging oil and gas industry spurring growth in other sectors of the economy.

He said with the passage of the Legislative Instrument of the three-tier pension reform, the release of funds accumulated under the two-tier occupational pension's scheme to private fund managers would bring about vibrancy in the fund management industry, and pledged their commitment to continue diversifying the investments by increasing penetration in attractive investment alternatives.

In another development, the HFC Real Estate Investment Trust recorded GH¢4,389,548 as a total increase in net assets in 2010 as against GH¢3,312,946 in 2009.

Mr Larbi-Yeboa said during the year under review, the fund fully completed and sold 16 units of two bedroom houses in Community 9325" at Tema,which influenced the performance of the Fund to return a yield of 16 per cent during the year.

He said value of funds under management also increased from GH¢5.66 million to GH¢9.57 million, an increase of 70 per cent over the period under review.