From The Church Times in England-THE Church Commissioners wrote to every diocese last Friday to allay fears over funding levels, after the Church of England suffered an estim ated 22 per cent loss.
Andrew Brown, Secretary to the Church Commissioners, confirmed that this loss equated to about £1.2 billion, based on the last valuation of its assets in late 2007, which totalled £5.6 billion. He said that this reduction was not as severe as losses on the FTSE 100 index, which had fallen by an average of 30 per cent.
In a letter to every diocesan board of finance, Mr Brown said that the Church Commissioners would be able to maintain planned levels of support for dioceses until the end of 2010, and might be able to continue until 2011-13.
He said this was possible because the Commissioners had paid out less to dioceses “in good years, in order to keep something in hand to cover leaner years”.
He mentioned that, over the past decade, the total return on the Commissioners’ investment fund — which includes a portfolio of assets of commercial, residential, and rural property investments, as well as stock market investments — had averaged 5.4 per cent per annum. This figure takes into account unaudited figures for 2008.
It also shows the effect of the financial crisis, as the ten-yearly average return, until the end of 2007, had been 9.5 per cent per annum.
The Church’s return still remained significantly better than the profits of 200 similarly sized funds, which had averaged just 3.7 per cent, and meant the Commissioners had been able to distribute about £21 million more each year to the Church over the past decade.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=71571
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