Sunday, February 05, 2012

Govt is Guilty of Breach of EPF Act 1991.

In accordance with the EPF Act of 1991,they are allowed to lend funds to the Federal and State govts including registered corporate bodies.However the Act prohibits the funds from lending to private individual home buyers. No matter how lucrative the profits may be, the Board cannot act contrary to the provisions of the Act. Board members have a fiduciary duty to ensure that they abide strictly to the provisions of the Act or face possible criminal prosecution should they act outside the ambit of their authority.
It is naive of the P.M to claim that the size of the $1.5 billion loan scheme was small relative to its fund size.What is pertinent is not the fund size but whether EPF is allowed under the Act to lend funds to private house owners which is contrary to the Act.
If the govt act is sincere in providing housing to the poor why is it only confined to the 20,000 PPR  tenants in Selangor? This only confirms the opposition claim that the Housing scheme has a political agenda. If not why then is it not open and applicable to all deserving house owners throughout Malaysia?After all the EPF funds are derived from contributors from all the state in Malaysia and not  from the 20,000 PPR tenants.only.
If the govt is  confident that  the scheme is safe , why dont the govt borrow the funds from EPF and used it as a social welfare program. This way if the houseowners default on their payments the fund is adequately protected since the govt will have to bear the brunt of any financial catastrophe. But the govt cannot have the cake and eat it.It wants to provide a conduit to obtain votes with such a populist act but at the same time has  passed the risk to another entity..EPF has once again being used to invest in a scheme that has no chance of making a decent profit.If they are. an attractive investment then why do commercial Banks reject all those houseowners loan?
Before making the decision of lending the $1.5 billion to this scheme, I strongly advice the Board of EPF to revisit their investment in MBSB in the 1990s where they lost nearly 1 billion in the same type of housing loans and development. I doubt very much they have recovered their loss in that investment till today.

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