THE Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has declared a 6.1% dividend for contributors for 2021.

The dividend paid for the previous year was 5.2%.

EPF said it will be allocating RM50.5 billion for this pay-out.

It also announced a 5.65% dividend for shariah fund contributors for 2021, with a total pay-out of RM6.27 billion.

Analysts previously predicted that EPF’s dividend would be about 6% for last year due to the first nine months’ net investment income rising by 26% in 2021.

EPF also saw positive performance of domestic and global equity markets during the fourth quarter.

However, contributors withdrew RM67.6 billion from the fund under the i-Sinar and i-Citra schemes as of the third quarter of 2021.

EPF’s highest dividend in the last 10 years was 6.9% in 2017.

The fund paid a dividend of 6.15% in 2012, 6.35% in 2013, 6.75% in 2014, 6.4% in 2015, 5.7% in 2016, 6.15% in 2018, 5.45% in 2019 and 5.2% in 2020.

The shariah savings dividend has historically remained low compared with its conventional savings counterpart.

EPF declared a 6.4% dividend for shariah savings in 2017, 5.9% in 2018, 5.0% in 2019 and 4.9% in 2020.

The fund last month announced RM48.02 billion in total gross investment income for the first nine months of 2021 ending September 30.

EPF investment assets stood at RM988.55 billion as at September last year, of which 36% were invested in overseas investments.

EPF said this year, it will accelerate efforts to help members rebuild retirement savings and cast its social safety net wider by coordinating with the government and relevant agencies.

As of December, about 6.1 million fund members had less than RM10,000 in their accounts, of which 3.6 million had less than RM1,000.

The figures are severely short of the fund’s basic recommended savings of RM240,000, which works out to only having RM1,000 a month for 20 years after retirement. – March 2, 2022.