Pension fund assets grew below inflation in 2002

Brazil's employer-sponsored pension fund industry saw total assets grow 9% year-on-year to 189bn reais (US$54.3bn today) at the end of 2002, pension fund association Abrapp said in a statement. The growth was below the 12.53% rise in consumer prices, as measured by the government's IPCA index. Pension assets represented 15.9% of GDP last year, compared to 14.4% in 2001. Since 1990, when the industry represented 3.3% of GDP, this ratio only dropped once year-over-year in 1995. Pension fund managers invested 168bn reais last year, up 9% from 154bn reais at the end of 2001. The industry's three largest funds are Previ, Petros and Funcef. Previ, the employee pension fund of federal bank Banco do Brasil, made investments of 43.4bn reais last year. State oil company Petrobras pension fund Petros invested 18.6bn reais, while savings bank CEF's fund made investments of 9.37bn reais. About 51% of the industry's assets were invested in the wealthy southeast last year, home to the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio. In comparison, only 3% of assets went to the underdeveloped northeast region. Abbrap figures do not include assets of pension plans, which are offered by insurers and put into investment funds run by banks and tracked daily by the local press.