EPF tight-lipped on dividend payout

KUALA LUMPUR: Employees Provident Fund (EPF) chairman Samsudin Osman is tight-lipped on payment of dividend to its 14 million contributors this year.

This followed reports that EPF could declare a lower dividend rate for 2018 compared to 2017, due to subdued local and regional equities markets.

“You can imagine the market condition, at what level. I cannot say… but I can’t give the answer. We have to look what happened last year to know whether it is good or bad,” he told reporters today.

“I myself wouldn’t know as they are still tabulating what the figures are going to be,” he said.

He said the calculation of dividend would take into account domestic as well as regional market factors.

EPF, with about 14 million members as of September last year, declared a dividend rate of 6.9% for conventional savings for 2017, the highest since 1996, amounting to a payout of RM44.15 billion.

Meanwhile, the shariah-compliant segment of the fund declared a 6.4% profit sharing for 2017.

EPF’s gross investment income for 2017 was RM53.14 billion with a total investment asset of RM791.48 billion as of end-December 2017.

Source: FMT