I take issue with Alex's assertions that foreign fund managers will abuse their possible future mandates to manage our Employee Provident Fund (EPF) money.

The issue is not whether the money is invested by local or foreign fund managers. The real issue here is the lack of corporate governance and transparency of the investment process at the EPF.

Alex's assertion that it is safer to keep EPF funds in Malaysia to prevent mismanagement is just untrue. That is the status quo today. But it hasn't stopped the non-transparent EPF from investing in highly-suspect deals.

Remember the Time dotCom IPO fiasco? How much did EPF lose? Was this foreign or local fund management? Obviously local. Who made the decisions? What was the composition of the EPF invesment committee that made the decisions?

How did the EPF come to the decision that Time dotCom was a great investment when the rest of the investment community knew it was a very poor buy? Does that generate confidence in the transparency and robustness of EPF corporate governance and investment process?

Hot money and speculative investments are not the preserve of foreign investors - remember Aokam Perdana? Who manipulated the stock price during its heyday in the early 1990s? Not the foreigners.

I hope Alex is beginning to realise that it is the transparency, governance and integrity of financial markets, institutions and investors that count. Not whether they are local or foreign.

I have you never received a full audited annual report from EPF despite being a contributor for many years. What does that tell you about the institution? All I get is an annual statement which only outlines my account and the latest dividend paid - an amount which has been falling for the last decade.

I've checked with friends working overseas and the minimum they get is an annual financial report (some even get half-yearly updates) from their retirement savings funds. And they have the option to change plans or managers if they are not happy with the performance. Do we Malaysians have that option?

This week Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment arm, published its first annual report in 30 years because of increasing pressure to improve its transparency. The results do not make for happy reading.

When will EPF publish its audited annual accounts? Or has it something to hide?