Bank Negara increased OPR to 3.25%

As expected, Bank Negara (BNM) has, at its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting today (25 January 2018), made the decision to increase the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) by 25 basis points from 3% to 3.25%.

This is the reverse of the last action taken on 13 July 2016, which reduced the OPR by 25 basis points from 3.25% to 3%.

For investors, if you are holding shares of financial institutions, this is a short term good news to you. If you are holding shares which the company is having high debt/equity (D/E) ratio, you need to evaluate how much will this OPR rise impact on the company's financial situation.

If you are planning to take a hire purchase (eg. buying a vehicle), act fast before the borrowing interest rate increases soon. If you are serving a home loan, expect your monthly commitment to your mortgage to slightly increase from now on.

You might probably also be interested to read about:

• How the OPR can affect the economic climate

Book: Algorithms Notes for Professionals

An algorithm is a procedure or formula for solving a problem, based on conducting a sequence of specified actions.

Algorithm plays an important role in software engineering. It is one of the major subjects compulsory for students studying computer science, computer engineering or similar IT course in university/college.

Algorithms Notes for Professionals is a freely downloadable PDF e-book compiled from Stack Overflow Documentation, released under Creative Common BY-SA.

Among the algorithms discussed in this e-book are:

• Graph
• Graph Traversals
• Dijkstra’s Algorithm
• A* Pathfinding
• Dynamic Programming
• Kruskal's Algorithm
• Greedy Algorithms
• Prim's Algorithm
• Bellman–Ford Algorithm
• Line Algorithm
• Floyd-Warshall Algorithm
• Catalan Number Algorithm
• polynomial-time bounded algorithm for Minimum Vertex Cover
• Multithreaded Algorithms
• Knuth Morris Pratt (KMP) Algorithm
• Edit Distance Dynamic Algorithm
• Online algorithms
• Big-O Notation
• Sorting
• Bubble Sort
• Merge Sort
• Insertion Sort
• Bucket Sort
• Quicksort
• Counting Sort
• Heap Sort
• Cycle Sort
• Odd-Even Sort
• Selection Sort
• Trees
• Binary Search Trees
• Binary Tree traversals
• Lowest common ancestor of a Binary Tree
• Searching
• Substring Search
• Breadth-First Search
• Depth First Search
• Hash Functions
• Travelling Salesman
• Knapsack Problem
• Matrix Exponentiation
• Equation Solving
• Longest Common Subsequence
• Longest Increasing Subsequence
• Dynamic Time Warping
• Pascal's Triangle
• Fast Fourier Transform
• Algo:- Print a m*n matrix in square wise
• Check two strings are anagrams
• Dynamic Programming

It is a very handy reference book for software engineers and computer science students.

Click here to download Algorithms Notes for Professionals for free.

How to apply for MyDeposit to get government to pay for deposit of your 1st home

If you are a Malaysian who plans to buy the first home in your lifetime, you ought to act quickly to apply for the MyDeposit Scheme so that the government will pay for the 10% deposit of your first home for the amount up to RM30,000. As long as the terms and conditions are met, you need not repay back this money to the government.

This will definitely able to help you to save a substantial amount of money to own your first home.

Application for MyDeposit Scheme has already been opened since 15 December 2017 and will be closed on 15 February 2018.

Among the terms and conditions for this MyDeposit Scheme are:

• You must be a Malaysia citizen.
• Application can be made as a household (husband and wife) or as an individual for unmarried persons.
• It must be for the first home in your lifetime. For husband and wife, both of them cannot own any home under their name before or during the application.
• Age of applicant must be 21 years old and above.
• The applicant must be earning a monthly income (in order to be eligible to buy a home), and the household monthly income must between RM3,000 to RM15,000.
• You must have a clean CCRIS record.
• The home to be bought must be from a new housing development project. It is NOT applicable to buying of subsale home, building house on a land with own contractor, PR1MA, PPA1M, RUMAWIP, PPR, MyHome and any Rumah Mampu Milik.
• The price of the home (as stated in S&P document) must not exceed RM500,000.
• You have not signed the S&P of the home before getting approval of your MyDeposit application.
• You must sign the S&P with your developer within 30 days after getting approval for your MyDeposit.
• The approved amount of money will be paid directly to your developer.
• You cannot rent out the home under this scheme. It must be for your own family stay only.
• You cannot sell the home within 10 years from the date of S&P.

Under normal situation, you are not required to return your approved MyDeposit money to the government. However, you will need to return it to the government under the following condition:

• You are not able to fulfil the home loan instalment and the home is put on bank auction.

To apply for this MyDeposit Scheme, you need to register an online account in SPRN website and follow the instruction from there.

Click here for more information about this MyDeposit Scheme.

Good luck!

RM500 matching grant (GS500) to be given free to SSPN new deposit in 2018 for primary school beneficiaries

On top of the recent good news about SSPN-I tax relief of RM6000 max has been extended until year 2020, the National Education Savings Scheme (Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional, SSPN-i) setup by the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional, PTPTN) for the purpose of higher education has on 2 January 2018 announced another good news for all existing and new SSPN depositors whose beneficiary is studying in primary school.

The good news is...

The government has allocated a fund for the first 500,000 existing and new SSPN depositors who deposited at least RM500 new fund into their account during 2018, whose beneficiary is studying in primary school. These accounts will received a free matching grant incentive of RM500 in their SSPN account (Insentif Geran Sepadan Percuma RM500 a.k.a. GS500).

 

The terms and conditions are for this GS500 are as follow:

• This RM500 free matching grant incentive is only allocated to 500,000 eligible SSPN accounts on and first come first serve basis.
• The age of the beneficiary of the SSPN account is between 7 to 12 years old or is studying in primary school in Malaysia.
• New fund of RM500 must be deposited into the SSPN account between 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018 (deposit - withdrawal >= RM500).
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive can only be withdrawn after the beneficiary has reached the age of 18 years old, or during closure of account due to either the depositor or beneficiary has passed away.
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive cannot be used for tax relief.
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive will be automatically given to the eligible SSPN accounts. There is no form to be filled up.

Fund can be deposited into existing SSPN account using FPX real-time online payment after login into the online SSPN-I Statement of Account website.

Source of reference:

• Simpanan RM500 Percuma, RM500 Untuk 500,000 Pelajar

 

 

PayNet Instant Transfer fee for individual and SME to be zerorized by 1 July 2018

I remember that during early December 2017, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) had announced a fee waiver of 53 sen (with GST) of PayNet Instant Transfer fee to be effective in 2018. PayNet is a merged entity of MyClear and MEPS.

Now we have already reached the year 2018, but when I checked on the banks' online transfer function, the 53 sen Instant Transfer fee (with GST) is still there. Am I missing something?

Yes! The effective date of this Instant Transfer fee waiver is on 1 July 2018, so there are a few more months to go.

In addition, I have found out that there are conditions for this Instant Transfer fee waiver as below:

• Only bank account belonged to individual and SME can enjoy the fee waiver. The waiver is not applicable to bank account of big corporations.
• To enjoy the fee waiver, the maximum amount of money in the transaction should limited to RM5,000 only. If you want to transfer more than that using Instant Transfer, and yet want to enjoy the fee waiver, perhaps can break the amount down and perform multiple transfers, with each transaction not exceeding RM5,000.