Investments made by the Labor Pension Fund netted record gains of NT$478.5 billion (US$15.2 billion) last year, the Bureau of Labor Insurance (BOLI) said yesterday.
In a statement, the BOLI said the fund made a 12.6 percent return on investment last year, surpassing the previous high of 11.84 percent set in 2009.
Last year’s gains also exceeded the previous annual record of NT$283.7 billion from 2021, the Bureau of Labor Funds (BOLF) said, which manages the fund’s investments.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
Based on current totals, more than half of the 12.72 million people enrolled in the fund would have their pensions boosted by more than NT$20,000, with 25.1 percent gaining more than NT$50,000.
The amount each person’s pension is topped up by depends on the length of enrollment and the premium rate, the BOLI said.
Information on how gains made last year have affected enrollees’ pensions was released yesterday, the BOLI said.
Workers could view the information through various channels, such as verifications through mobile phones, citizens’ digital certificates and online labor insurance certificates, the bureau said.
Alternatively, workers could also go to BOLI offices for information about their gains last year, the bureau said.
Beginning today, workers could also check changes to their pensions using ATM cards issued by Bank Land of Taiwan, E Sun Commercial Bank, Taishin International Bank, Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, First Commercial Bank and Chunghwa Post, the BOLI said.
As of the end of last year, the combined value of the funds managed by the BOLF, including the new Labor Pension Fund, the Labor Retirement Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund, the Employment Insurance Fund and the Arrears Wage Payment Fund, totaled NT$719.37 billion, constituting a 12.8 percent annual rate of return.
The BOLF said that about 46 percent of the gains posted by these funds last year came from investments in the local stock market.
The TAIEX, the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s weighted index, soared 26.8 percent last year on the back of enthusiasm about artificial intelligence development and expectations that the US Federal Reserve would initiate a rate-cut cycle.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching