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Dr. Leroy Almendarez will assume his new position as Chief Executive Officer of the Social Security Board on August 19. His appointment follows the departure of Deborah Ruiz, who served in the position for five years. Dr. Almendarez told Love News that he looks forward to continuing the digitalization of services, mainly pragmatic investments to generate returns for the SSB Fund.
Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Executive Director of Beltraide: “It’s clear from the discussions that we’ve been having that there’s a lot of good things happening with Social Security. The fact that they’re not only focusing, but they’re also implementing a lot of things in terms of digitalization to make it easier for those who are more widely dispersed to access information, to participate. So that’s a very good thing. The fact that you don’t have to leave early in the morning to go to Belize City or Belmopan to get services is a very positive thing. So the other thing is, when you look at the performance of the fund at this point, I mean, it does also tell you that in terms of investment income, it’s viable, but obviously when you have that level of liquidity, it also tells you that you may be exposed to considerable risk. If you just sit there, obviously you need to invest, but not just invest, but invest to make sure you The returns that you can get, because you’ve done all the analysis, the returns will be there because the surplus on the investments, the surplus, whatever you know the investment income will at least be there, you know, those long-term branches, for people who need pensions and things like that. But the overall sustainability of it, the fact that it can withstand any stress test because it’s not exposed or anything like that, is very important. I think a lot of work has been done, but obviously what that means is that we’re taking Social Security to another level, increasing the investments, but as I mentioned, diversifying the investments, but investing competitively. Because when you’re talking about investment returns, if there’s inflation at the same time, it actually reduces the returns. So I’m sure we’re going to look at these things very, very carefully.”
Dr. Almendarez will be leaving his position as Beltraide’s executive director, a position he has held since September 2018. As for Ruiz, she spoke about her tenure.
Deborah Ruiz, CEO of the Social Security Council: “It’s been a joy to work at the Social Security Administration. Over the years, you know you’re more involved in the technical side of things, processing the transactional payments of benefits and so on. But as you move up in the organization and really get into the policy side, I had the opportunity to be the CEO of the Social Security Administration, and you realize how important and constructive that is. I took that on when we were dealing with COVID. So we now have to be distracted dealing with the response and all of these things. Now we have a new CEO. His focus will be on engaging with stakeholders, looking at expanding coverage and adapting to the changing needs of the population in the future.”
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