KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 25 — As many as 54 per cent of Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors aged 54 have savings of less than RM50,000 for retirement.

EPF Operations Division Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Mohd Naim Daruwish said in total, only 34 percent of EPF active contributors reached the level of basic savings by age.

To date the EPF has 14.6 million active contributors and 530,000 employers with a total managed fund of RM940 billion.

"The basic savings set by the EPF is RM240,000 because the average life expectancy of the people of this country has now increased to 75 years and generally the people will go through a relatively long retirement period of around 20 years, based on the retirement age of 55 years.

"This situation is worrying and is likely to become more serious in the future and may have a negative impact on the well-being of the people and a burden to the government,” he said when addressing the state ’Financial Well-Being’ and i-Suri Incentive Programme here today. 

The programme was launched by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Sulaiman Md Ali.

Mohd Naim said among the factors that caused the contributors’ savings to be low was due to poor financial literacy among the people, which is around 36 percent, compared to other countries such as Singapore at 59 percent and Myanmar, 52 percent.

As such he said, the EPF encourages more people, especially the self-employed, such as online entreprenuers and e-hailing drivers to register under the EPF’s voluntary retirement savings programme, (i-Saraan) to ensure their future, especially during their retirement period.

He said until last June, only 255,958 people from all over the country had registered under i-Saraan.

i-Saraan is a government initiative to ensure that the self-employed have savings when they reach retirement age by making payments or contributions voluntarily according to their ability and not exceeding RM60,000 per year. — Bernama