Online renewing Malaysian passport with MyONLINE*PASPORT website

Renewing Malaysian passport at the immigration office has been a time consuming process that can easily cost you half a day to even a full day.

The good news is: now Malaysian can renew their passport using the online service provided by the  MyONLINE*PASPORT website.

With this service, you can complete your password renewal application, together with its payment, anytime and anywhere by using your web browser. Then, you just need to go to the immigration office of your choice to collect your new passport, which will take you probably less than 30 minutes counted from the time you step in the immigration office.

The prerequisites to use this online passport renewal service for Malaysian are as below:

• You must have a valid Malaysian passport with electronic chip.
• For children under 18, the renewal applicant must be the same person who applied for the existing passport.
• You must get ready a JPG file of your recent passport size photo that fulfil the requirement, to be uploaded during the online renewal application.
• You must have a valid credit card to make online payment.
• You must have a printer to print out the receipt, to be used to collect your new passport at the immigration office.

The steps are as follow:

• Get ready your photo.
• Use your web browser to go to MyONLINE*PASPORT website.
• Read the terms and conditions, and click on the "Agree" button.
• A popup window will appear, click on the "OK" button.
• Fill in your existing passport and IC detail. Specify your choice of location to collect your new password. Search for your passport detail in the system.
• Fill in the online application form, upload your photo, and submit your application.
• Make online payment using your credit card. For normal 5-year Malaysian passport, the fee is RM200. Senior citizens above 60 years old will get 50% discount.
• Print out the receipt.
• Bring the receipt, your existing passport and your IC to the designated location to collect your new passport.

You can also go to the same website to check for your passport renewal application status.

It seems that many are still unaware about this online passport renewal website, because the website currently shows the number of online application so far is only 3380. Feel free to bookmark this article and share it with your family, relatives, friends and colleagues.

Mobile LTE network: moving forward from 4G to 5G

5G is the next generation mobile network coming after the current 4G LTE-Advanced. It is still under research and development, but we can expect it to hit the market in near future.

What can we expect from 5G enhancement from the current 4G technology?

• Up to 1000 times increase in bandwidth per unit area
• Up to 100 times more connected devices
• Up to 10 Gbps connection speed to mobile devices in the field (see picture below for comparison with older technologies)
• Perceived network availability of 99.999%
• Perceived 100% network coverage
• Maximum of only 1ms end-to-end round trip latency delay
• Up to 90% reduction in network energy utilization

So, 5G is the next generation mobile technology well prepared for the world of IoT, with significantly improved bandwidth, connection speed, stability, reliability, coverage, etc.

With 5G, the necessity of laying fibre landline will be greatly reduced. The world will truly enter into Gigabit Internet era.

Huawei which has just received the "Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G" award at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 is among the industry leaders who lead in the worldwide 5G development. (Unfortunately to investors, Huawei is not a public listed company)

EPF declared 5.70% dividend for 2016

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has just declared the dividend rate for financial year 2016 to be 5.70%, which is 11% lower than the 6.40% dividend declared for 2015 (last year).

Calculation: (5.70-6.40)/6.40 = -0.70/6.40 = -11%

This is the 2nd year of dividend decline since the historical highest dividend payout of 6.75% declared for 2014.

If you have already registered as an EPF i-Akaun member to access your EPF account detail with their online service, you can login to your online account now and check the actual amount of dividend in RM added to your EPF account by viewing your 2016 online statement.

With this dividend rate, it seems that those who have withdrawn their EPF Account II savings to reduce their housing loan during 2016 might be regreted to do so, as the effective mortgage rate is generally lower than 5.70% in 2016, due to a lower housing loan financing rate along the year (around 4.35% offered by most banks).

If you have withdrawn your EPF Account I savings for investment in unit trust or fund, your fund manager has outperformed EPF if your 2016 ROI in the fund is greater than 5.70%. Otherwise, you might want to meet up with your unit trust agent or fund manager to find out what's wrong.

Note that in 2016, EPF has recognized a net impairment amounting of RM8.17 billion, compared with RM3.07 billion in 2015 to reflect lower equity prices (meaning, paper lost in share market)!

If you had gain money (had positive return) in share market during 2016, you were indeed doing better than the fund managers of EPF in share market investing.