The CPF became a hot topic this year after blogger Roy Ngerng was sued by the Singapore prime minister, who accused him of defamation, in relation to an article on the CPF. Roy had explained that Singaporeans have one of the least adequate retirement funds in the world, even though the CPF is invested in two of the government’s investment firms, the GIC and Temasek Holdings, and they are ranked as the top 10 richest sovereign wealth funds in the world. A survey by Blackbox Research in July showed that more than half of Singaporeans sided with Roy and believed that the CPF is unfair. In response to the reactions from Singaporeans about the CPF, the government set up the CPF Advisory Panel in September to look into how to adjust the CPF Minimum Sum, withdrawals and payouts. However, Roy and other critics argue that if the CPF interest rates and the wages of Singaporeans are increased, this would automatically lead to an increase in the retirement funds of Singaporeans and would increase the adequacy. Economic blogger and analyst Leong Sze Hian also said on his blog that Singapore is “the only country in the world that keeps the excess returns (like an implicit tax) estimated to be about 3% on our CPF funds – resulting in our having the lowest real rate of return of all national pension schemes in the world since 1999.”
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 10:26:42 +0000
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