SINGAPORE, July 28 — With the investment environment highly uncertain, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC saw lower returns in its latest 20-year assessment period and it will be looking to take on a more active investment approach ahead. This is especially in light of the greater challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Today, the investment manager of Singapore’s reserves reported an annual return of 2.7 per cent — over and above the global inflation rate of about 2 per cent — across a 20-year period from April 2000 to March 2020. 

It is lower than the 3.4 per cent annualised real rate of return from the previous 20-year period and is also the second lowest annualised real rate of return since GIC’s inception in 1981. 

The lowest was 2.6 per cent, which was for the 20-year period ending in March 2009, a time when the global economy was besieged by the global financial crisis. 

During a briefing with the media yesterday, GIC’s chief executive officer Lim Chow Kiat said that the timing and shape of an economic recovery is highly uncertain. 

The evolution of the Covid-19 crisis would depend on three factors: