The Financial Services Department gave city council an update on the city’s investments this week during this turbulent time in the stock markets.

The city has $100 million invested, with $1.75 million withdrawn to date to meet budget requirements. As of April 9, the city’s portfolio sits at $95.22 million.

Director of Financial Services Brian Acker said the moderate term portfolio declined 4.85 per cent as of April 9 and the long term portfolio has declined 6.61 per cent.

“But certainly because of the care and prudence taken by the investment committee and council as a whole, really a lot of that has been mitigated,” he said.

Any additional withdrawals council approved for 2020 will be done later, according to Acker, when the market has a chance to recover.

The saving grace for the city with nearly half of the portfolio is invested into GICs, which are currently higher than high-quality government and corporate bonds, which the city used to hold. The GIC investment returns are between 2.35 and 2.55 per cent.

“Early on in the market declines, the actual bond if we had still held bonds, we would have seen some losses in that regard as the bond market actually did decline initially early on,”

Acker said the city holds about $49 million in GICs with annual investment earnings of about $1.2 million.

With the GICs and being underweighted in equities, Acker felt the city is in a good position when the markets recover.