KUALA LUMPUR: The Finance Ministry has denied allegations that the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) lost RM6.09 billion in a month.
Its Minister Lim Guan Eng said when referring to the value of stocks, it would still be incorrect to assume such a loss based on the fluctuation of FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index (FBM KLCI).
He said the rise and fall of Bursa Malaysia index was influenced by factors like the pace of economic development, good financial governance, and political stability in and outside Malaysia.
He noted that as of yesterday, the country’s performance on a whole was the best in the Asia-Pacific although not much changed since the end of 2017.
He said if compared with the book value, EPF still recorded overall profit.
However, when the stocks are not sold, then this profit is not recorded and is an unrealised gain, he said.
He said this when answering a question from Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba (BN-Tenggara) over immediate steps by the government to overcome losses suffered by EPF.
Lim said EPF’s investment performance will improve based on investor confidence in the government’s economic management of Malaysia.
“The government efforts to stamp out corruption, wastage in the public sector, increase efficiency and effectiveness as well as competitiveness of the private sector, will restore investor confidence,” he said.
In answering an additional question from Adham over whether the government would diversify EPF’s investment portfolio to low-risk investment in order to maintain EPF unit holders’ confidence and prevent Malaysia from taking loan from Japan, Lim said EPF unit holders can be assured that they would get their investment back on retirement or when they need it.
“EPF plays its role well and its performance is not controversial, in fact its new chief executive officer was also from among the ranks of EPF itself.
“There is continuity to ensure all good investment done previously will be continued,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lim said that the government’s official currency debt was only at RM21.3 billion, and from that amount, RM15.7 billion was in US dollars while RM5.3 billion was in Japanese yen.
“It only covered 3.1 percent of the government’s official debt (RM21.3 billion),” he said, adding that RM5.3 billion did not reach 1 percent of the said debt.