The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) said the 14th general election will not affect its investments.

Its CEO Shahril Ridza Ridzuan said this is because political events only had short-term effects on the market.

“Most long-term investors, like ourselves, are more focused on long-term investments,” he said at a media briefing today.

Shahril Ridza (photo) added that there was no uncertainty in the market with the coming election, which has to be held this year.

“Most investors already price that into the market, in terms of there being a general election in Malaysia this year.”

He pointed out how most people focused instead on corporate results, which are driven by a multitude of factors.

“This is driven really by microeconomic factors (and) structural factors that go into our projection of growth. We are looking at both global and domestic growth. I think we are very comfortable at where things are.

“Domestically, our economy is doing well. Exports are rising and at an all-time high and domestic growth is also coming in.”

Investors, Shahril Ridza added, are comfortable with the domestic microeconomic conditions.

On another matter, Shahril explained that the varying dividend rates between EPF’s conventional and shariah accounts were due to the former’s access to global banking stocks.

Shariah accounts, he said, had limited access to banks listed under Bursa Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange).

“We look at Malaysia for instance. We have a lot of very big banks listed under Bursa Malaysia like Maybank, CIMB, RHB. We only have one listed Islamic bank which is Bank Islam and a potential one in the future which is MBSB which is converting into an Islamic bank.

“So the scope for shariah accounts to actually have an exposure to the financial industry is much more limited,” he said.

The recent dividend announcement by EPF was the highest in two decades.

The EPF declared a dividend rate of 6.90 percent for conventional accounts for 2017 with a payout amounting to RM44.15 billion and 6.40 percent for “Simpanan Shariah” with a payout amounting to RM3.98 billion.

The total payouts for 2017 amounted to RM48.13 billion, an increase of 29.8 percent from 2016.