Every Friday at 4 p.m. in recent days, the management team of Social Security meets under the leadership of Director Timothy Hodge to work out the details of the 2008 operational budget.

The Management Team at the Social Security Office

In addition to Mr. Hodge, the rest of the team comprises Yolanda Gumbs (Assistant Director, Social Security Policy), Maglan Richardson (Assistant Director, Human Resources and Corporate Services), Lena Sasso (Manager, Operations), Clive Gumbs (Internal Auditor) and Doris Richardson (Manager, Finance and Accounts).

Mr. Hodge described the budget as a tedious exercise. “This is the management side of the budget which has to go to the Board for approval and which may have to go through several alterations before we are through,” he explained.

“It deals with our contribution and investment income, other income, our benefit expenditure, administrative expenditure and also our capital expenditure.

“It is the preliminary stage of the budget, but we are dealing with pretty substantial sums. We are dealing with income nearly in the region of 40 million dollars and at this point we are projecting benefit expenditure of about 7 million dollars and administration and other expenditure of about 5 million. We are projecting a surplus income over expenditure in excess of 25 million dollars. People believe this is profit but it is to meet the future liabilities of pension entitlement of persons when they retire.”

Mr. Hodge was asked how the rapid economic development of Anguilla was impacting Social Security. “Well it is impacting us in several ways,” he replied. “It has increased the number of registered persons tremendously. We have gone from having registrations during a year averaging of about 600 to about 1200 last year and to about 1800 new persons registering this year. It has also increased our contributions income tremendously as more persons are working and paying.”

It is therein lies the overwhelming success of Social Security which at the end of 2006 had EC $160. 5 million in reserves! This is a phenomenal growth of the system in 25 years.

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