Withdraw your Economic Restructuring Shares now!
The Ministry of Finance has announced the final dividends for your Economic Restructuring Shares (ERS) of 10.74%. You may check your holdings and more importantly, withdraw your ERS because the final dividend has been paid out on 1 March 2008 and CPFB will only automatically credit back the monies into your bank account on 7 April 2008:
“5. Singaporeans who have previously received their GST Credits or encashed part of their ERS through their bank accounts will receive their ERS payments automatically through the same bank accounts by 7 April 2008″
The other reason to take out your money earlier is that your ERS balances EARN NO INTEREST while the CPFB “prepares” it for crediting on 7 April 2008.
So what are you waiting for? Go get back your ERS monies NOW.
2 comments:
Hi Panzer,
Thanks for the info, I have already encashed mine yesterday on March 3, so it should be credited within 4 working days (i.e. March 7). When I discovered that it was not automatically credited on March 1, I called them up yesterday and was told that it would only be "processed" in April 2008. Not liking the wait (as it amounts to opportunity cost of leaving money idle and not earning interest), I chose to encash the money through the nss website.
I believe the government should have informed all that they can choose to encash earlier instead of letting the money stay idle for 1.5 months not earning interest. There should have been more news on this aspect; am quite irritated that I had to actually call them to be told of this, but hey this is Singapore and apparently not all is as efficient as it seems. :P
Regards,
Musicwhiz
Hi Musicwhiz
Being the cynic that I am, I think the CPF deliberately set the auto-credit to 7 April so that they can earn 1 month interest for those apathetic citizens who do not proactively login and encash their ERS monies back to their bank accounts. I calculated that even at a treasury bill yield of 1.35%, 1 month's interest is about $2+ and if you multiply $2 by, say 1 million people who opt for auto-credit by doing nothing, that's a cool $2million in the bag for CPF/MOF because people prefer convenience over proactivity!
Great to see that you bothered to call up to ask. For me, I read about it in Sgfunds forum and decided to spread the word for people to encash since the monies are due to them as citizens. ;-)
BTW, my daughter is born! She is now my motivation to achieve financial freedom!
Be well and prosper.
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