Category Archives: Finance

Private Retirement Scheme launched in Malaysia

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Yesterday,Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak announced the voluntary private retirement scheme(PRS) as an alternate employee pension scheme in addition to Employee Provident Fund(EPF) which is compulsory in Malaysia.

There will be a range of private investment funds to choose.Individuals depending on their own retirement goals,needs and risk appetite could choose several funds to invest in for a long term.

Like EPF,the total investments in PRS will also separate into two accounts.Account A could only be withdrawn on reaching the legal retirement age (currently it’s 55 years old) whilst Account B could be withdrawn once a year from one year after the first contribution of any approved fund.However,since the tax on the income contributed under the scheme is exempted,the pre-retirement withdraw will entitle a tax penalty of 8% on the withdrawal amount.

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My First Home Scheme

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PM Najib announced a project called My First Home Scheme for low-mid income class to buy their first home after work.The main concept is the government will guarantee people who have met the criteria for 10% down payment so that the applicants can get 100% amount for the buying property from 25 participant banks.

I have made some conclusions of the criteria:

1.Malaysian

2. First time to buy property in Malaysia

3.Below 35 years-old

4.Monthly income below RM3000

5.Have a stable job and with it for more than 6 months

If you’ve met all above requirements,you’re entitled to buy a house from RM100,000 to RM220,000 with 100% loan up to 30 years.However,another detail added recently is the monthly instalment could not over one-third of monthly income.

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New rules for credit card holders in Malaysia

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Bank Negara Malaysia(the central bank of Malaysia) regulates the new rules for credit card holders in Malaysia,eventually the new rules are more specific to low income class.By tying up the credit policies,Bank Negara will be able to reduce the risks of inflation in the country and bankruptcy issues on individuals.The details are:

1.Minimum income requirement of applying credit card is RM24,000 per annum.

2.For cardholders earning RM36,000 or less per annum:

(a)only can hold credit cards from two issuers.For those who have more than 2 cards currently,they are given to choose two preferred issuers before the end of  this year.Cardholders will be given at least 2 years to pay the debts on the cards cancelled for the purpose of meeting the requirement.

(b)the maximum credit limit should not exceed 2 times of monthly income per issuer.For the outstanding balance over that maximum credit limit,a grace period of 2 years will be given to them to meet the new requirement.

All above rules are affected immediately.

BNM also announced that Further Enhancements to Credit Card Infrastructure Security will run by steps.Effective 1 January 2012, transaction alerts via Short Messaging Service (SMS) will be implemented by card issuers for their cardholders after transactions are performed. This will be followed by the implementation of the Personal Identification Number (PIN) verification for all card transactions from 1 January 2015 onwards.

I support the move of BNM of controlling the credit market to make it grow stable and healthy.

 

 

I like reading Personal Money

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I have the interest of reading books and financial magazines when I’m free.I think reading is a perfect way to study things and remind ourselves of applying the knowledge to our daily lives.

Personal Money is a good local financial magazine under The Edge which always has discussions about the simple investments,the strategy,the concept of saving money etc and so I can keep my track of growing up my family fund by a right way.I believe the difference between a rich man and a poor man is of their thoughts.Thus,learning towards richness is definitely necessary.

I hope my friends could also know it and learn it from Personal Money.It’s monthly published and only RM9.00 if you are in Peninsular Malaysia.

Bad movements?Good movements!!!

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Malaysian government announced that the prices of oil,gas and sugar will increase into a proper stage effective from 16th July,2010 in order to cut some subsidies.The details are as follow:

From Friday, the subsidies for sugar, petrol, liquefied petroleum gas and diesel will be cut as part of the gradual subsidy rationalisation programme, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday.

The price of sugar will go up 25sen to RM1.75 per kg; LPG will go up 10sen to RM1.85 per kg; petrol RON95 will be up 5sen to RM1.85 per litre and diesel will be up 5sen to RM1.75 per litre.

RON 97 will no longer be subsidised. It will be subjected to a managed float, where the price will be determined by the automatic pricing mechanism, the statement said.

(Reported by TheStar)

In fact,I have totally agreed the movements of cutting the subsidies and I had talked about it one month ago.Oil and gas have been limited resources all over the world and they will create a lot of pollutions.By increasing the prices of them,it could reduce such issues.Eating too much sugar will cause diabetes.Higher price of sugar will let people reduce the consumption of it and so being much healthier.However,I also care about how the government will monitor on spending on savings of those subsidies to affirm that the savings will put into places where it could benefit all Malaysians.

I do hope that the accounts of Malaysian government could be more transparent and the officers could also do the jobs hard and think of the citizens in every second as they are public servants.

Malaysia’s economy

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The Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib claimed that GDP in Q1 2010 is 10.1% greater than the same period of last year.It seems to be very good news as it indicates Malaysia’s economy is walking out of the mess and turning into a right way.However,some people put some arguments out because they see the growth of Malaysia’ economy is based a large deficit and creating a huge amount of debts.

Malaysia government provided RM18.6billion as the subsidies to petrol price,gas price and so on.It is almost 11% of GDP for the year,higher than many other developed and developing countries in the world(France-1.4%,UK-0.7%;Indonesia-2.7%,India-1.6%,China-0.7%).However,the expenses on subsidies are actually only ranking at No.4 of total expenses.The No.1 expense is for salary and other bonus of civil servants-1.22million of civil servants cost RM52.9billion for the last year-it’s around 3 times of subsidies and 33.7% of the total expenses.That means each public servant could get average income for the year at RM43360,at the same time,the Per Capita GNI(Gross National Income) of Malaysia is RM23567(ie. Malaysia has approx. 27.7million citizens in 2009.)

From the points I can see,I suggest the government smoothly cuts down the subsidies,but also need to cut down the number of public servants by increasing the operational efficiency and applying e-solutions and automation systems in order to facilitate the administrations among different departments.

Malaysia might not be another Greece so soon,but if the government doesn’t know how to control the debts and deficit,I don’t think a better future will be close to the people in this land.On the contrary,the whole country will probably suffer the pain later.

Maybank2U goes mobile

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I use the online banking services for many many years because I know that Maybank provides the most flexible online functions up to date.Now Maybank claims that it has developed the mobile portal which will bring more convenience to its existing customers.

m2umobile Steps to log on the service on mobile devices are quite simple:

  • Launch your Mobile Browser
  • Key in the URL – http://mobile.maybank2u.com.my
  • Click Login
  • Enter your existing Maybank2u.com Username and Password.
  • You are now logged in to perform your banking transactions!

    • Some services could be done by the mobile portal:

     
    • Account Summary
      • Balance Inquiry (Savings, Current, Credit/Debit Card)
      • M2U History, Recent Transaction, Today’s Transactions, Transaction History (Deposit, Credit/Debit Card)
    • Funds Transfer
      • To Own Accounts
      • To Registered 3rd Party Accounts
      • To Registered Interbank GIRO
    • Payments
      • Registered Bill Payment
      • Card Payment (Own)
      • Card Payment (Registered 3rd Party Accounts)
    • View Rates
      • View Forex & Deposit Rates

    Well,the service is still under beta stage and so the facilities are quite limited.I think it could be enhanced once it goes through more tests and gets more feedbacks.I wonder which bank will be the next one that will introduce mobile portal to be closer to an e-world.