‘Election has no bearing on dividends’
KUALA LUMPUR: Any notion that the latest Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) dividend is artificially high due to the 14th General Election (GE14), and will drop drastically next year, is false.
Political blogger Lim Sian See said as the dividend was announced based on the performance of the previous year, there was no truth to the claim that the latest dividends were influenced by the election year.
“For example, the dividend rates for 2013 (declared in 2014) and 2014 (declared in 2015) were higher than the rate in 2012, which was declared in 2013, the year the 13th General Election took place.
“Thus, the claim that the dividend rate is influenced by the election is baseless. EPF is professional,” he said.
On Saturday, EPF declared a dividend of 6.9 per cent for conventional and 6.4 per cent for syariah savings. The payout for conventional savings was the highest since 1997.
Lim said the high EPF dividend was justified.
“Whoever still in doubt should have a look at the quarterly performance announced by EPF over the past year, as well as the performance of local and global stock markets.
“All these will prove that EPF did well last year.”
He said there would always be people who were unhappy with the dividend rate.
“When the dividend rates are low, they say the country is in crisis, and when the rates was high, it was due to an election.
“There will also be people saying that EPF has gone bankrupt. They have been saying that since the 1960s. But almost 60 years on, EPF has not gone bankrupt and no one has ever been denied their rightful withdrawal.”
Lim also said EPF dividends were on a downward trend during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s tenure as prime minister.
“In fact, Dr Mahathir had the dubious honour of being the prime minister in charge when EPF declared its lowest ever rates of 4.25 (2002) per cent and 4.5 (2003) per cent since Malaysia was formed.
“This was not only due to the recession in 1998, but due to the capital controls imposed when he pegged our ringgit.
“This stopped a lot of investments into our country — causing our economy and stock market to underperform and consequently, our EPF to underperform.
“The fact that the EPF rates were low in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 is concrete proof of this underperformance.”