CYPRUS – The nationalisation of Cyprus state pension funds is "unlikely" to go ahead, according to the head of the country's largest private scheme.

Marinos Gialeli's comments come after the Cypriot parliament rejected a plan to raise €6bn through a levy on bank deposits, part of a €16bn bailout of the nation proposed by the European Commission.

Speaking with the BBC after yesterday's parliamentary vote, MP Marinos Marvrides of the main coalition party DISY admitted that the nationalisation of state pension and provident funds was being considered, with the view to raising as much as €3bn.

Gialeli, chief executive of the €300m Hotel Employees Provident Fund, said he believed the potential nationalisation, or further loans from the country's two largest pension funds – telecoms authority Cyta and the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) – to be unlikely, as the Commission had expressed a distaste for further loans.

The EAC pension fund, which last December bought €100m of three-month Cypriot debt as the government struggled to pay salaries, told the Cyprus Mail today that, as "a show of tangible support", it would not redeem the bond, due for repayment at the end of the month.

Requests for comment from EAC went unanswered at the time of publication.

Anastasia Anastassiades, senior consultant at Aon Hewitt in Cyprus, however suggested that the country's pension and provident funds would be "effectively forced" to invest in government bonds, rather than depositing assets with the country's unstable banks.

"Long-term government bonds with maybe a bit of an upside – linked to the fortunes of our gas resources, which in turn can be thought of as bonds loosely linked to inflation – is the natural habitat of such funds," she said.

"If this move is coupled with a change in legislation so that people cannot take their pension benefits before retirement, we could see the assets of these funds increasing exponentially, and then the proportion in government debt will look small."

However, Gialeli said the country felt "betrayed" by Europe, as the funding problems facing Cypriot banks were triggered by the necessity for a haircut to Greek sovereign bonds.

"Good or bad, Cypriot banks lost more than €4bn on that haircut," he said.

He also noted that critics expressed surprise at the high exposure to Greek debt.

"But they bought it because, at that time, the European Central Bank was saying that all the European government bonds were safe," he said.

"So they bought it. They shouldn't have, but they bought it because of that. What we are seeing now is the small death of euro. No deposit is safe."

In the event that the levy, in its iteration of a 10% tax for deposits above €100,000, were to go ahead, Gialeli said his fund would be able to offset the impact of any losses.

This was despite one-quarter of the fund's assets being held by the banks, not uncommon for Cypriot pension funds.

"We are not going to lose 10% of that due to the gains in interest, plus the other 75% of the portfolio will cover the losses of it," he said. "We don't expect any negative results for 2013, as it is until now. Diversification is what helps us."

He said the fund was considering how to diversify further, following on from plans to invest in hedge funds and infrastructure.

"We are working on a new ALM with Aon Hewitt, so next week we will decide to get more diversified."

While further real estate investment – considered in 2011 – is now "on hold", Gialeli said increased exposure to alternatives such as infrastructure would be discussed at next week's meeting.

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