The Second Annual S.S.B. AGM

The second annual general meeting to be held by the Social Security Board since 1981 was convened today at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza in Belize City. Dubbed S.S.B. Connect, it’s used as a platform to engage stakeholders and contributors on how the Social Security Fund is operating. As you know, Cabinet approved an S.S.B. proposal to reform its contributions and pension scheme. It took effect on July first and saw an increase in social security contributions for 2019; there will be two additional increases in 2020 and then in 2021 to a total of two percent over the three-year period. At today’s event, C.E.O., Doctor Colin Young shared the financials for 2018 and the undertakings that reduced expenses.

Dr. Colin Young, C.E.O., S.S.B.

Dr. Colin Young

“We shared the audited financial statements, we talked about how much we spent on administrative cost, how much we spent on benefit payments and how we did with our investments. So we shared all of those information with the public; we are also sharing this live on Facebook and these audited financials will also be on our website on Facebook. As part of the commitment in ensuring that there is efficiency in how the board is managed, we undertook a number of initiatives to become more efficient. One of them is that we looked at closing the sub-offices in some of the areas, we renegotiated a lot of service contracts; we also moved away from cheques to direct deposits so now your benefit payments are made directly into your bank account or credit union account. We use to cut literally tens of thousands of cheques and to clear that would be about three dollar and ten cents. Now direct deposit is a dollar. So, based on all of that, we had a two percent decrease in administrative expenditure in 2018 relative to 2017.”