All eyes will be glued to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) announcement this Saturday (February 28, 2026), The retirement fund will announce its annual dividend rate. Experts believe that it could maintain the dividend rate for conventional savings at 6.3% or possibly reach 6.5%. For 2024, both the conventional and shariah EPF funds reported dividends of 6.3%.
However, maintaining a dividend rate of 6.3% won’t give the Anwar administration the “wow factor” to win votes at a time when a snap election could be called this year. With plunging popularity and controversies plaguing the prime minister’s leadership, he is desperate to appease not only ethnic Chinese and Indians, whom he has foolishly offended, but also to pacify ethnic Malays.
A dividend of 6.5% is nice, but not great. With 74% of active EPF contributors having less than RM100,000, an additional 0.2% would translate to only RM200. It would be worse for 50% of EPF members who have less than RM10,000, not to mention 20% contributors with only RM1,000 left in their EPF accounts – thanks to four special withdrawal schemes to ease financial hardship during Covid-19 pandemic.
Forget about comparing with neighbouring Singapore. If you wish to compare Malaysia’s higher EPF dividend rate with Singapore’s CPF, then you should also compare the Singapore dollar strength over the years as a factor in compounding interest. Singapore’s CPF’s 2.5% annual dividend has a higher compounding power than EPF’s 6.5% based on 35-year period (1990-2024) due to Ringgit depreciation (from 1.4283 at the start of 1990 to 3.4817 by the start of 2024).
While EPF cannot afford to announce a dividend rate lower than 6.3% for the financial year 2025 for obvious reasons, there is a strong justification for 7%. The reason is simple – former Prime Minister Najib Razak had managed to order the retirement fund to announce a stunning 6.9% dividend for the financial year 2017, just before he called for a snap election in 2018.
Make no mistake, every prime minister manipulates and exploits EPF’s annual dividend rate for political reasons. After all, the Employees Provident Fund is a statutory body under the Ministry of Finance that reports its financial performance and investment strategies to the government. And the finance ministry is the most important portfolio under both Najib and Anwar.
If the EPF could declare 6.9% dividend in 2017 – up from 5.7% in 2016 – under the Najib administration, there is no reason why it could not declare 7.0% (or even higher) under the current Anwar Madani, who has been gloating about his leadership. The rate could always drop the following year after a national election, the usual gimmick and tactic used previously by almost all prime ministers.
To prove that Anwar is a more capable finance minister and a better leader than Najib, the easiest and fastest way to make 16.53 million EPF members happy is to dole out at least 7% dividend. It’s also a good distraction to divert attention from the share purchase and corporate mafia scandals plaguing anti-corruption MACC Chief Commissioner Azam Baki, whom PM Anwar tries to defend.
Declaring a dividend lower than Najib’s 6.9% – the highest in EPF’s history since 1996 – means Anwar was just an empty vessel who has been bragging about his financial and economic wizardry. In fact, when Anwar was the finance minister (1991-1998) under Mahathir administration, the highest and lowest EPF dividends were 8.0% and 6.7% respectively.
So, was Anwar merely lucky to be at the right place at the right time – riding on Mahathir’s sterling leadership, which saw the Super Bull Run in the stock market – but shamelessly claimed credit as the best finance minister back then? Giving credit where it’s due, despite Mahathir’s iron-fist rule for 22 years (from 1981 to 2003) as the 4th Prime Minister, EPF had on four consecutive years (1983-1987) declared 8.5% dividend – the highest ever in Malaysia’s history.
For 14 years between 1980 and 1994, EPF’s dividends were between 8.0% (lowest) and 8.5% (highest). Under finance minister Anwar, however, the dividend rate started to drop to 6.7% for financial years 1997 and 1998, before he was sacked by then-Mahathir for corruption and sodomy in 1998. Since Anwar became the 10th Prime Minister in November 2022, he has been trumpeting about high GDP growth under his stewardship.
Likewise, the EPF’s nine-month 2025 performance recorded an “11% increase” in gross investment income. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for its members to not enjoy a higher dividend rate. Anything lower than previous year’s 6.3% would trigger questions and spark suspicions that investment income has been diverted or siphoned elsewhere by Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
What’s the point of boasting about economic growth and EPF’s investment performance, but its members could not enjoy the fruits of it? Maintaining the same 6.3% dividend rate, or worse, slashing it to lower than last year under an excuse that it is still higher than bank fixed deposit rates is unacceptable because EPF dividends are not directly pegged to banking interest rates in the first place.
The EPF or KWSP must explain why it could not declare a higher dividend despite better return on investment (ROI). Worse, the dividend distribution was not consistent, hence inviting doubt of hanky-panky within the finance ministry. Either EPF made huge losses but decided to cover up with a spectacular performance announcement but paid a lower dividend, or EPF made huge profits but siphoned it for dubious reasons.
For example, in 2023, the total payout – RM50.33 billion for conventional and RM7.48 billion for syariah – means after minus RM57.81 billion in dividends, EPF kept the remaining RM9.18 billion of income (86.3% payout). In 2024, however, EPF kept only RM1.22 billion after deducting a total dividend of RM73.24 billion from a total investment income of RM74.46 billion – a mind-boggling 98.4% payout.
Clearly, if the retirement fund cannot pay the same 98.4% payout this round, it would create more questions than answers. Eventually, the chickens would come home to roost. You can’t fool all the people all the time. Either the retirement fund pays the same 98% payout this year or admits it had manipulated the dividend payout last year. And we know who gave the order to interfere.
It’s public knowledge that EPF money had been used in the past to bail out cronies or GLCs (government-linked-companies) due to mismanagement, incompetence, or corruption. During the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis, then-PM Mahathir had formed a RM60 billion fund, sourced mainly from the Employees Provident Fund, to bail out his cronies, including his own sons.
As former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s privatization crumbled under the weight of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement during the financial crisis, companies like Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) was given soft “irrecoverable” loan amounted to RM1.4 billion, while MAS (Malaysia Airlines System) was also bailed out as it sat on a RM9.5 billion debt.
Other companies that enjoyed mega bailouts, just to name a few, included UEM, Malayan Banking, Bank Bumiputra, Sime Bank, KUB, Bank of Commerce, RHB Bank, Ekran’s Bakun Dam Project, Park May-Intrakota bus, Monorail, and even Konsortium Perkapalan Bhd – owned by Mahathir’s son Mirzan whose brilliant business acumen saw the company submerged in debts as much as RM1.7 billion.
In truth, EPF is extremely capable of returning at least 7% dividend to its members as history has shown. It has no reasons whatsoever for keeping or hijacking billions of income that rightfully belong to the contributors. The people can see the grand buildings of EPF and renovations done. Like it or not, the expectations for yet another high dividends in 2026 are very high.
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- Conventional 5.5% vs. Syariah 5.4% Dividend – Suspicion Over Hanky-Panky In Diverting EPF Dividends To Syariah
- Game Over For Opposition – Mahathir’s Super-Rich Children In Trouble After “Dubai Move” Failed & 120 MPs’ Bluff Exposed
- The Real Reason Mahathir Attacks Anwar – Here’s What The Ex-PM Fears As The New PM Started Dismantles His Cronies
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February 26th, 2026 by financetwitter
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