By JULIUS BARIGABA

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Uganda’s National Social Security Fund remains upbeat that it will bring more savers onto its portfolio and reach Ush20 trillion ($5.57 billion) in assets by 2025, despite a slowdown in the country’s economic growth.

NSSF executives say that operating in an economy that grew at only 3.9 per cent this past financial year is an uphill task, and the Fund will need to improve its performance.

Currently, NSSF is growing by Ush1.3 trillion ($262 million) per year; to hit the Ush20 trillion ($5.57 billion) target, it would need to grow by a further Ush300 billion ($83.5 million) each year.

But after some of its key staff went through nine months of strategic skills training in Nairobi and Uganda by Strathmore Business School, the executives are optimistic that this target is achievable over the next seven years.

“When I set this target two years ago, I approached SBS to help us with the skills we needed to manage our processes better and deliver this objective,” said NSSF managing director Richard Byarugaba.

“Considering that economic growth has dropped, we need to bring on board new members, and that means we need people with good skills.”

NSSF staff also need training in information technology, business intelligence, data mining and business analytics.

The Fund currently has Ush8.4 trillion ($2.33 billion) worth of assets under its management, as the pension sector attracts more interest from private players.

For the financial year ending 2016/17, NSSF declared an 11.23 per cent interest rate for its members — a drop from the 12.3 per cent declared for the previous financial year.

The drop in interest rate was attributed to the difficult economic and investment environment in which the Fund operated. However, the Ministry of Finance noted that this was still a “good rate” as it was “above the 10-year average rate of inflation at 8.68 per cent.”

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