--- title: "Antigua Will Repay Social Security EC$437.8 Million Over 25 Years. The Fund Receives No Principal Until Year Eleven." slug: antigua-social-security-437-8-million-bond-no-principal-until-year-eleven-2026 canonical: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/antigua-social-security-437-8-million-bond-no-principal-until-year-eleven-2026/ date: 2026-10-30 desk: Business tags: ['Business', 'Antigua and Barbuda', 'Public Finance', 'Pensions', 'CARICOM'] feature_image: antigua-social-security-437-8-million-bond-no-principal-until-year-eleven-2026-title.png description: "Antigua and Barbuda's 2026 Budget Statement, delivered on 4 December 2025, commits to consolidating the government's obligations to the Social Security Board into a bond amortised over 25 years, with a cash injection of up to EC$75 million within twelve months. The reported schedule pays interest only for ten years." ---
By LCN Business Desk
A pension fund that has reported no liquid reserves is to be repaid nearly half a billion dollars, and for the first decade of that repayment it receives interest and nothing else.
What did the budget commit to?
A consolidated bond over 25 years, and a cash injection inside twelve months.
The 2026 Budget Statement, delivered by Prime Minister Gaston Browne on Thursday 4 December 2025, says it in one sentence: "the Government will consolidate its obligations into a $437.8 million bond amortized over 25 years and we will make a cash injection of up to $75 million within the next twelve months to be used to diversify the investment portfolio."
The statement adds that "these measures will be formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding shortly", and that "the management of Social Security has confirmed the institution is now financially stronger than in 2014, with rising cash reserves".
What does the bond cover?
Three sets of obligations, the oldest of which has not performed for more than a decade.
Pointe Xpress reports the bond as covering the 2010 bond, the 2022 Development Bank bond and all outstanding contributions through 2025. The 2010 instrument has been described as non-performing for over a decade.
So the figure is not new lending. It is the government putting a single dated instrument around money the fund was already owed, some of it contributions that should have been paid in as they fell due.
How is it repaid?
The fund receives interest only for ten years, and principal after that.
| The reported schedule | Payment |
|---|---|
| Years 1 to 5 | Interest only, at 3 per cent |
| Years 6 to 10 | Interest only, at 5 per cent |
| Years 11 to 25 | Principal plus interest |
Source: Pointe Xpress, reporting the repayment structure. The Budget Statement gives the principal and the 25-year term and does not publish the schedule.
On that schedule the fund receives about EC$13.1 million a year for five years, then about EC$21.9 million a year for five more, which is about EC$175 million of interest across the first decade and no principal at all, on this newspaper's arithmetic from the published rate and principal.
The first principal payment would fall in 2036 if the structure begins in 2026.
Why does the schedule matter for this fund in particular?
Because the last actuarial review the Board publishes says the fund has no liquid reserves and has run deficits every year since 2011.
The most recent actuarial review the Social Security Board publishes, as at 31 December 2014, records a Fund with no liquid assets. That document is the combined 10th and 11th Actuarial Reviews, prepared as of 31 December 2014, and it states that "the Fund has experienced deficits each year since 2011 and now has no liquid reserves", that assets "held by the Fund are illiquid and thus not suitable for the current needs of the Fund", and that the Fund "is currently operating on a pay-as-you-go basis without liquid assets".
Its own performance table is the part that bears on an interest-only instrument.
| Social Security Fund performance indicators | 2009 | 2012 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reserve-expenditure ratio | 8.2 | 6.6 | 5.5 |
| Three-year average nominal yield on reserves | 1.4% | 2.0% | 1.1% |
| Three-year average real yield on reserves | −0.7% | −1.4% | −0.7% |
Source: combined 10th and 11th Actuarial Reviews of the Antigua-Barbuda Social Security Fund, prepared as of 31 December 2014, Table 2.1. The review's own comments describe "extremely low returns" and "negative real returns over last 8 years".
A fund that earned a negative real return across three consecutive reviews is being offered 3 per cent for five years. Whether that is a gain depends on inflation, and the budget reports headline inflation averaging 1.4 per cent from January to August 2025, against 6.4 per cent in the same months of 2024.
Has it been signed?
Not on the public record this newspaper can find.
Pointe Xpress reported that technical teams from both entities were preparing a Memorandum of Agreement with plans to implement the new structure by January 2026. No execution of that memorandum, and no signing of the Budget Statement's Memorandum of Understanding, appears in the accounts read here.
The twelve-month commitment has a date attached to it. The Budget Statement was delivered on 4 December 2025 and promised the cash injection "within the next twelve months", which places the outside edge of that undertaking at 4 December 2026, about five weeks from now.
Is the fund being asked for money at the same time?
Yes, for a hotel, and the amount sits inside a range.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne said on 25 October 2026 that the government is considering drawing up to $60 million from the Treasury, State Insurance, Social Security and the Airport Authority for two new 150-room hotels, with neither the instrument nor the return specified. Reported accounts put the Social Security contribution at between EC$10 million and EC$20 million, so the higher figure is the top of a range rather than an approved sum.
Cabinet was due to take the proposals on Wednesday 28 October. On the public record this newspaper can find, no outcome has been published.
The fund already has a hotel exposure. Cabinet approved EC$20 million to renovate 33 rooms at the Jolly Beach Resort together with a conference facility and infrastructure, and the property, 27 acres of beachfront valued at EC$67 million, has been part of the arrangements settling what the government owes. That plan has changed in the telling: in June 2026 the Prime Minister described a hybrid under which about 200 rooms are retained and roughly 20 acres set aside for a private investor, saying "We're still interested in transferring Jolly Beach, at least a portion of it, to Social Security."
Do the figures agree across the accounts?
The principal and the term are agreed. Almost everything around them is not.
| The point | The disagreement |
|---|---|
| The consolidated principal | EC$437.8m in the Budget Statement and Pointe Xpress; one 2025 account gives $450m and another $330m for the delinquent bond alone |
| The term | 25 years in the Budget Statement; one 2025 account describes a five-year bond |
| Rates | 3 per cent then 5 per cent in both the schedule and one 2025 account |
| The Jolly Beach plan | 2025 accounts describe selling rooms under the citizenship programme; the June 2026 plan retains about 200 rooms |
| The Social Security hotel contribution | EC$10m to EC$20m as a range, not a fixed figure |
The direction is not in dispute. What a reader cannot do is treat any single figure from the 2025 coverage as current, because the plan has been restated at least twice and the most recent authoritative statement of the principal is the budget itself.
What else is the government carrying?
Another decade-old obligation it describes as delayed.
The same Budget Statement records the Depositor Protection Trust: "We committed over $300 million to resolve ABI Bank in 2015, of which $142 million was allocated to safeguard deposits in excess of $500,000.00. To date we have paid over $110 million to the DPT beneficiaries." It adds that "though delayed, the Government will make good on delivering the balance of the DPT benefit to the remaining beneficiaries in the shortest time possible."
On those figures about EC$32 million of the allocated amount remains unpaid eleven years after the resolution, on this newspaper's subtraction.
The budget also commits to a new Debt and Development Finance Office, says it is "pursuing debt-for-climate swaps" and is "finalising a liability-management operation with the support of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF)", with the financing to fund projects "while reducing domestic arrears that arose during the COVID-19 period".
How does this sit beside the revenue question?
The same budget leans on a revenue line Brussels wants closed.
So one document carries both commitments: a 25-year instrument to a pension fund, and a revenue line whose end date is being set in Europe.
What is settled, and what is not?
The budget's words are settled. The schedule, the signing and the Cabinet decision are not.
The EC$437.8 million principal, the 25-year term, the up-to-EC$75 million injection, the twelve-month undertaking, the Memorandum of Understanding, the statement that the institution is stronger than in 2014, the Depositor Protection Trust figures and the debt measures are quoted from Antigua and Barbuda's 2026 Budget Statement as published. The actuarial figures and quotations are from the combined 10th and 11th Actuarial Reviews of the Antigua-Barbuda Social Security Fund, prepared as of 31 December 2014 and published by the Board.
Not established: whether the Memorandum of Understanding or the Memorandum of Agreement has been executed; whether any part of the EC$75 million has been paid; the bond's issue date, and therefore when year eleven falls; whether the reported 3 and 5 per cent interest-only schedule is the final structure, since the Budget Statement does not publish a schedule; what Cabinet decided on 28 October; what the fund's position is now, since no actuarial review later than 2014 is published; what "rising cash reserves" amounts to in figures, which the statement does not give; and whether the EC$67 million Jolly Beach valuation is current.
A government can take twenty-five years to repay a pension fund. Whether the fund can wait ten of them for the first dollar of principal is a question its own actuary last answered in 2014.
The entities
- Social Security Board administers the Social Security Fund and publishes its actuarial reviews.
- Social Security Fund is the fund the 2014 review describes as operating on a pay-as-you-go basis without liquid assets.
- 2026 Budget Statement is the document committing to the bond and the injection, delivered 4 December 2025.
- Gaston Browne is the Prime Minister, who delivered it.
- Combined 10th and 11th Actuarial Reviews is the Board's most recent published review, prepared as of 31 December 2014.
- Jolly Beach Resort is the 27-acre beachfront property valued at EC$67 million in the arrangements with the fund.
- Depositor Protection Trust (DPT) holds the obligation arising from the 2015 resolution of ABI Bank.
- Debt and Development Finance Office is the body the budget commits to establishing.
- Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) is supporting the liability-management operation.
- Pointe Xpress is the publication reporting the bond's composition and repayment schedule.
What the title card shows
Every data point on the article's title card, in text.
- EC$437.8 million. The consolidated bond principal in the 2026 Budget Statement.
- 25 years. Its amortisation period.
- Years 1 to 10. The reported interest-only period, at 3 per cent then 5 per cent.
- About EC$175 million. Interest payable across those ten years with no principal, on this newspaper's arithmetic.
- EC$75 million. The cash injection promised within twelve months of 4 December 2025.
- No liquid reserves. What the Board's most recent published actuarial review, as at 31 December 2014, records.
- Negative real yield. The three-year average return on reserves at each of the 2009, 2012 and 2014 reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
What has Antigua and Barbuda committed to pay Social Security?
Its 2026 Budget Statement commits to consolidating the government's obligations into a bond of EC$437.8 million amortised over 25 years, with a cash injection of up to EC$75 million within twelve months of the statement, which was delivered on 4 December 2025. The measures were to be formalised in a Memorandum of Understanding.
When does the fund receive principal?
Not for ten years, on the schedule reported by Pointe Xpress. Years one to five pay interest only at 3 per cent, years six to ten interest only at 5 per cent, and principal plus interest runs from years eleven to twenty-five. The Budget Statement itself does not publish a schedule.
How much interest is that?
About EC$13.1 million a year for five years and about EC$21.9 million a year for five more, so roughly EC$175 million across the first decade with no principal, on this newspaper's arithmetic from the published rate and principal.
What does the fund's own actuary say?
The Board's most recent published review, the combined 10th and 11th Actuarial Reviews prepared as of 31 December 2014, records that the Fund "has experienced deficits each year since 2011 and now has no liquid reserves" and that it is "operating on a pay-as-you-go basis without liquid assets". Its three-year average real yield on reserves was negative at each of the 2009, 2012 and 2014 reviews.
Has the agreement been signed?
Not on the public record this newspaper can find. Pointe Xpress reported technical teams preparing a Memorandum of Agreement with implementation planned for January 2026, and no execution appears in the accounts read here. The twelve-month window for the EC$75 million injection closes about 4 December 2026.
Is the fund being asked to invest at the same time?
Yes. The Prime Minister said on 25 October 2026 that the government is considering drawing up to $60 million from the Treasury, State Insurance, Social Security and the Airport Authority for two new 150-room hotels, with the Social Security contribution reported at between EC$10 million and EC$20 million. Cabinet was due to take the proposals on 28 October and no outcome has been published.