Finance Minister Eugene Cox yesterday attacked Auditor General Larry Dennis for claiming the Accountant General's Department provided incomplete information over the Government employees' pension fund.

Two sets of actuaries differed by $74 million in their estimation about the liabilities the fund faced in their reports on the Public Service Superannuation Fund (PSSF) for 1999.

Mr. Dennis told The Royal Gazette one of the reasons for this was that incomplete or inaccurate information was provided to the actuaries by the Accountant General's Office, leading one set of actuaries to make too many assumptions.

Mr. Dennis said last week: "I suspect the figures given to the actuary from the Accountant General's Office were not good figures. The biggest concern was that information was able to be misinterpreted by an actuary.

"We've complained all the time that the information wasn't as good as it should be. The actuary has to be told, amongst other things, how many dependants there are. The information was not complete and the actuary made too many assumptions."

But in a statement to MPs yesterday, Mr. Cox said: "Regrettably the differences were ascribed to a lack of complete and accurate information provided by the Accountant General's Department. This is not so.

"The data used by the actuary for the current year and for approximately the previous 20 years has always included information about employees only, as the Government does not maintain pension details about employees' dependants."

Mr. Cox said Mr. Dennis had given the Consolidated Fund Financial Statements for the year ending March 31 2001 a clean bill of health "which confirms he is satisfied with the actuarial study and the information that it relies upon". Mr. Cox also said the $56 million, 14 percent, loss in the value of the PSSF for the year ending March 31 2001 due to a stock market slump was "not an actual loss at all - it is an unrealised loss recorded in the financial statements at that specific date".

He said that as of December 5 this year, the fund's value had risen by $40 million to $282 million. But this still leaves the value of the fund $16 million below what it was at March 31 2000.

Mr. Cox said: "As any informed investor would know when dealing with pension plans, a long-term horizon is the basis for measuring investment performance.

"Indeed, even recently the global stock markets have been performing exceedingly well, recouping a substantial part of their previous losses. Such performance, if sustained, will allow the Superannuation Fund to recoup and surpass the previous position as at 31 March of this year and result in an unrealised gain in the value of the fund."