SINGAPORE: Singapore's government will assess the performance of state investors GIC and Temasek against their mandates and risk profiles and will not compare them with other funds, a minister said on Monday.
"Our focus has always been on long-term performance, rather than on short-term or year-to-year fluctuations," said Jeffrey Siow, a senior minister of state for finance.
"The government's assessment is that the returns generated by GIC and Temasek are reasonable and within expectations given their mandates and their risk profiles," he told Parliament.
Lawmakers asked about the performance of both firms after a Financial Times in December called Singapore's sovereign wealth returns "poor."
In July last year, Temasek reported a 10-year total shareholder return of 5% for the year ended March 31, 2025, which lagged behind the MSCI ACWI's 9% and Singapore's Straits Times Index at 6%, though its 20-year return of 7% is broadly in line with both benchmarks.
Meanwhile, GIC's 20-year annualised real return came in at 3.8% for the same year, marginally below the 3.9% it posted a year earlier, its weakest performance since 2020 when returns hit 2.7%.
The 51-year-old Temasek, which managed a S$434 billion ($338.35 billion) portfolio as of March 2025, will launch a new investment structure from April 1, it said in August.
Siow said given how investment markets have been uncertain and volatile, "GIC's returns over shorter periods could be low or even negative, but the government is able to absorb these short-term market fluctuations and risks because it has a strong balance sheet."
"We will continue to review their mandates and performance regularly, in line with changes in the global economic investment landscape," Siow said.
(Reporting by Xinghui Kok and Jun Yuan Yong; Editing by David Stanway and Thomas Derpinghaus)
