Facts and figures from EPF 2008 Annual Report

The EPF (a.k.a. KWSP) 2008 Annual Report reviews quite a lot of facts and figures. Here are some which might be of your interest.

As at 31 December 2008...

EPF’s total membership stood at 12.07 million members, of which 5.71 million of them are active members (members who continue to contribute). The population of Malaysia in 2008 (as recorded by Department of Statistics) was 27.73 million. From here, we can estimate that the workforce of Malaysia in 2008 was formed by about 20.6% of its population.

The amount of registered employer in 2008 was 441,820, of which 48,510 of them were new employers. Meanwhile 35,009 employers had cancelled their registration. From here, we can guess that about 10.98% of the employing companies are newcomers to the business world in Malaysia. However, there are also 35,009 employing companies closing their business in 2008.

The EPF dividend rate from 1952 to 2008 is charted as below.

This indicates that from year 2000 onwards until today, the EPF dividend rate has dipped below the average of 6%. The glory time of 1974-1999 when EPF dividend rate stayed above 6% had already gone for 10 years. When will it come back again?

Out of the 5.71 million active EPF members, 3.19 million of them are male, while 2.52 million of them are female. Their savings with EPF is shown as below.

From here, we can roughly guess that, male employees are generally having higher salary than female.

Most of the employees are in the 10,001-15,000 savings band (8.29% of male employees and 9.58% of female employees).

Less than 1% of the employees have RM500k and above savings in EPF. Only 5,575 males and 887 females (total to 6,462) have over RM1 million savings in EPF.

The average savings of the 53,022 active members at the age of 54 is RM132,539.78 (male: RM150,280.40; female: RM96,856.03).

Click here to download and read the complete EPF 2008 Annual Report to find out more.

Free Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00

The freely downloadable Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00 (百变东南亚) supports both Taiwan and Sing/Mal version of Garmin GPS navigators.

This travel guide covers 5 famous tourism attraction places, namely Angkor (吴哥), Bali (巴厘岛), Hong Kong (香港), Macau (澳门) and Singapore (新加坡).

You can download the Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00 here, the filename is SoutheastAsia.zip with size of 34,215kb.

There are 5 files inside the compressed SoutheastAsia.zip:

• AngkorTravel.gpi
• BaliTravel.gpi
• HongKongTravel.gpi
• MacauTravel.gpi
• SingaporeTravel.gpi

You just need to connect your GPS navigator to your computer with USB cable, and unzip those 5 files into Garmin/POI folder of the GPS storage.

To access the travel guide, tap on Where to? > Travel Guide.
The travel guide will recommend you the places to visit, eat, stay and shop. Information such as address, phone number, brief description, opening time, and photo(s) are available for the point of interests (POI).

You can tap the photo on the upper left to enlarge it to full screen. Tap on More button to show more information about this POI in the travel guide.

There are many more travel guides freely available for download in Garmin Taiwan's website.

New property website by The Edge

The Edge has just launched a new property website at http://www.theedgeproperty.com/ with the tagline of "Everything property".

The website features news reports related to the property industry, as well as a wide array of differing topics for the property owner and investor taking advantage of the Internet’s global appeal. It looks pretty informative.

However, the registered username and password in The Edge Malaysia website cannot be used here. You have to register for a new account in this The Edge Property website in order to be able to post comments and enjoy some other priviledged features.