Reports by MARTIN CARVALHO and TARRENCE TAN

       SOME 3.6 million Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors have less than RM1,000 in their accounts, says the Finance Ministry.

       It said that based on its assessment as at Sept 30, there had been withdrawals amounting to RM101bil through the i-Lestari, i-Sinar and i-Citra programmes.

       “Some 6.1 million members had less than RM10,000 in their accounts.

       “From that amount, 3.6 million contributors had less than RM1,000,” it noted in a parliamentary written reply yesterday.

       The Finance Ministry said dwindling EPF savings was an even more worrying issue among bumiputra contributors, where an estimated 78% had applied to withdraw monies from their EPF savings.

       “As a result, 4.4 million or 54% bumiputra members had less than RM10,000 in savings.

       “Two million, or 25%, had less than RM1,000 in savings,” it said.

       The Finance Ministry also said the B40 EPF contributors – consisting of more than five million people – had seen their savings reduced to an average of RM1,005.

       It added that as at Sept 30, EPF contributors aged between 45 and 59 recorded an increase of 55,000 members to 1.62 million.

       “That’s an increase of 3.5% since Dec 31, 2019, that recorded 1.56 million active EPF contributors,” the ministry said.

       From the active 1.62 million contributors, about 479,000 or 29.6% of them had savings of not more than RM50,000.

       Though more than 70% of EPF contributors aged between 45 and 59 had savings of more than RM50,000, the finance ministry said it wasn’t a comfortable figure to retire with.

       It noted that RM50,000 was only able to provide retirement income averaging RM200 for 20 years or RM1,000 a month for four years.

       “Since this age group only has less than 15 years before retirement, they are facing challenges in building adequate retirement savings.”

       The Finance Ministry was responding to Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ibrahim (PH-Pandan), who asked the government to state the figures of active EPF contributors who had savings of less than RM50,000.

       The i-Lestari, i-Sinar and i-Citra programmes were packages introduced by the government since last year to help Malaysians weather the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.