KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 — The country’s largest pension fund, Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman was tight-lipped on the 2018 potential dividend payout figures when approached by reporters at the University of Malaya, today.

The query arose after media reports yesterday expected the EPF to declare 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.

“I myself wouldn’t know as they are still tabulating what the figures are going to be,” he said, adding that it would still be based on the domestic as well as regional market factors, similar method as in previous years. 

Samsudin was speaking to reporters after launching University of Malaya’s Social Wellbeing Research Centre (SWRC) ‘Who Says I Am Retired?’ book, a compilation of mini autobiographies featuring senior civil servants, corporate leaders and academicians sharing thoughts on retirement, here today.

SWRC, formerly known as Social Security Research Centre, is an institute financed by an EPF endowment fund.

EPF, with about 14 million members as of September last year, declared a dividend rate of 6.9 per cent 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 per cent 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. ― Bernama