KUALA LUMPUR – The i-Sinar and i-Citra programmes, aimed at providing affected members with supplemental income amid the current economic crisis, are not heavily impacting the Employees Provident Fund’s (EPF) investment at the moment.
Chief strategy officer Nurhisham Hussein said the fund has a plan in terms of managing EPF’s liquidity and cashflow.
“We are managing the impact on the cashflow and investment. We have sufficient cash for these programmes. It is not heavily impacting investment at the moment.
“So, the impact on dividends (from the programmes) is still early to say as dividends can be heavily impacted by market performance. We still have another five months to go,” he told a virtual media briefing today.
To date, for i-Sinar, Nurhisham said a sum of RM56.7 billion has been paid from the total approved amount of RM58.8 billion.
For the i-Citra programme, he said, which was estimated at RM30 billion in payments, a total of RM2.3 billion has been disbursed out of the RM19 billion approved from 4.57 million applications.
Meanwhile, he said the EPF’s strategic asset allocation (SAA) is taking into account the financial crisis and market downturn, which would be able to withstand future shocks or economic uncertainty.
“We notice the domestic market isn’t doing so well but international markets are doing very well. That will balance out some of the performance issues. In terms of managing asset classes and the entire investment portfolio, we do have a plan for that. So far, it is working.
“The SAA will be revised every three years. We have some practical allocations, depending on market conditions. But it is intended to be over the portfolio and it is not intended to go up and down in the markets. We have had a diversified investment portfolio since mid-2013 and that has helped us a lot,” he added. – Bernama, August 6, 2021
