KUALA LUMPUR: The 2023 Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) dividend that remains strong gives confidence to employees about the performance of their investment in the retirement savings, as well as indicates stable and improving economic growth, says the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC).
Its president Mohd Effendy Abdul Ghani said that the MTUC welcomes the announcement and added that the increase in the sharia savings dividend to 5.40% compared to only 4.75% in 2022 could also attract more contributors to choose sharia savings in the future.
"We believe that stable economic growth will further increase employment opportunities and indirectly increase the number of EPF contributors, which we can see in 2023 has increased while production has reached pre-epidemic levels," he said in a statement on Sunday (March 3).
This comes after the EPF announced a dividend rate of 5.50% for conventional savings, with a total distribution of RM50.33 billion and 5.40% for shariah savings, with a total distribution of RM7.48 billion. This includes the total amount of income distribution for 2023 which is as much as RM57.81 billion.
Mohd Effendy said EPF's commitment to maintain a strong dividend gives certainty to employees regarding the growth of employee savings in the long term, especially retirement savings.
"It is to ensure that each contributor has a total savings amount of at least around RM240,000 when they retire," he said.
"Contributor awareness is also necessary to maintain additional years in savings accumulation and productive employment will increase savings to enable a higher (savings) amount during retirement later," he added.
