Active military members to get full refund of contributions – RSBS

MANILA, Philippines - The Armed Forces of the Philippines Retirement and Separation Benefits System (RSBS), awaiting an official order of deactivation, assured all its 130,000-strong active military members of full refund of their contributions.

RSBS president and chief executive officer Norman Legaspi gave this assurance as he confirmed that he is just waiting for the official approval and order from Governance Commission for Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG) for them to fold up operations.

Currently, Legaspi said RSBS has sufficient funds and assets at its disposal to cover payments to refund soldier members within three to four years period following its deactivation.

“Our book value now is P16 billion compared to our liabilities of P12 billion,” Legaspi said.

The P12 billion is the pension fund contribution, including the six percent interest per year that RSBS is going to pay out to all members.

However, Legaspi stressed that once an approval from the GCG is obtained for the RSBS to close down, refund of contributions would be done phase by phase until all members have been paid and this payment scheme may last from three to four years.

He added that RSBS has submitted its recommendation as early as January this year to the GCG for it to stop collecting monthly contributions of soldiers because of “RSBS’s failure to reach self-sufficiency and is no longer feasible to continue its operations.”

But this recommendation has yet to be acted on by the GCG leaving RSBS, as mandated by law, to continue collecting five per cent in monthly contributions from soldiers’ salaries.

Presidential Decree 361 created RSBS in 1976. It was envisioned to take over the pension of the AFP personnel when it reaches its peak of self-sufficiency.

But until now, RSBS is not giving away any pension because it failed to reach its self-sufficiency target. The soldiers are still drawing their pension from the government, Legaspi said.

This is because, Legaspi explained, no changes were made in RSBS’s defective structure of operations, unlike that of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) where funds are infused regularly.

In the case of RSBS, it has only received P200-million fund infusion from the government in four-year tranches in 1997 and it has not changed since then, he said.