FOUR statutory boards have suffered a 14-per-cent paper loss this year on their investments in credit-linked notes, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in Parliament yesterday.
But the investments are not related to bankrupt United States investment bank Lehman Brothers.
The four boards are the Civil Service College, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the Professional Engineers Board and Singapore Land Authority.
Mr Tharman said the loss was not very different from the recent performance of the global market.
'None of the underlying entities and assets referenced to by these credit-linked notes have defaulted,' he said.
'The four statutory boards are monitoring the situation closely, and will take the necessary steps to minimise any losses in these investments.'
He added that the exposure of the four boards to such notes makes up only 0.05 per cent of the total investment portfolios of all of Singapore's statutory boards.
Mr Tharman said that the Government has advised all the statutory boards to abide by sound principles of diversification and risk management when investing.
