The government said it is finalising withdrawal access for the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Flexible Account, which was announced by the Prime Minister during his budget speech recently.
Deputy Finance Minister I Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan said starting next year, the government will open another account for EPF contributors called the ‘Flexible Account, however, he said no details on the method, or percentage of the savings that go into the account have been decided.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced that the EPF Flexible Account is a new account that members can access at any time. Anwar, who is also the Finance Minister, said EPF members’ accounts will also be restructured to empower retirement savings. However, the move has been seen by experts as contradicting the savings concept of the only retirement fund available for Malaysians. If people can access their money anytime in the account, how will they see their savings nest grow?
Additionally, the Deputy Minister added total EPF investment in the domestic market is expected to increase to RM700 billion by the end of 2023, which is an increase of 9.0 percent compared to 2022. According to him, the EPF will continue to give priority to domestic investment by dividing a large part of its annual funds to the local market for domestic investment including in the form of a money market in local banks.
As of June 2023, the total amount of EPF investment in the domestic market is as much as RM665 billion, the investments are guided by the fund allocation set by the EPF investment panel each year. For the period 2018-2022, it had allocated an average of more than 80 percent of the total annual fund allocation to be invested in the domestic market. “In 2023, as much as RM97 billion or 83 percent of the total annual fund allocation has been allocated,” he said.
He said for the period 2022-2024, among the investments that were given focus was fixed income instruments of 45.5 percent, listed equity (42.5 percent), private equity (3.0 percent), tangible assets (6.0 percent), and money market instruments (3.0 percent).
