EPF takes long-term view on all investments

PETALING JAYA: The Employees Provident Fund (EPF), which bought a retail mall in Poland recently, said it will look at all its investments from a long-term perspective. 
“The decision to invest in Poland was made in accordance with our strategic asset allocation and we ensure that it is within our risk return profile,” an EPF spokesperson told SunBiz, but declined to provide more details on the purchase.

It was reported that EPF bought the mall Galeria Katowicka for “close to £300 million (RM1.58 billion)”, quoting a source from Britain. The deal is believed to have been completed in March.
Back in February, EPF, via SIM, bought two logistics assets in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam and Moerdijk.
According to EPF’s annual report, it is the pension fund’s long-term and forward looking strategy to continuously increase its exposure in the real estates and infrastructure asset class.
In 2017, the asset class recorded a growth of 9.19%, from RM29.46 billion in 2016 to RM32.17 billion in 2017. Most of the investments in the asset class were made through associate and subsidiary companies, of which dividend income from these companies made up the majority of the asset class’ gross investment income.
For 2017, real estate and infrastructure asset class registered a gross investment income of RM2.97 billion, an increase of 19.62% compared with 2016 of RM2.49 billion. This translated to a return on investment of 8.55% in 2017, higher by 33 basis points compared with 8.22% recorded in 2016.
Within the asset class, foreign investments, which were initiated in 2010, have shown encouraging performance and have played their intended role as an effective hedge against inflation.