CPF - my views

Many years ago, I was proud of our Central Provident Fund system. It was simple and good for the people. It allowed them to accumulate their savings for old age. Later, it was used to purchase a HDB flat at an affordable price.

The CPF system started to be changed, for the worse, after 1985. Many changes were introduced that had negative impact on the scheme and produced worst outcome for the citizens. Today, I can only say that our CPF scheme is complicated, convoluted, confusing and is not producing the right outcome.

I will be writing on what the changes that I like to see in our CPF scheme, that will make it good for the people, and for the Government. 

I want to say something about why things had turned out to be so bad for the CPF. The people who manage the CPF, i.e. the Ministry of Manpower (and its predecessor ministry) and the policy planners (i.e. the scholars) were not practical people. They were planners. 

Worse, they were too arrogant to consult the experts in the field. As an actuary and the head of a life insurance company, I could give them some useful ideas - but they were too proud to ask me or to discuss my suggestions (even after I wrote to them). They prefer to find their own solutions - in their ivory tower. These planners later become recruited as ministers in our Government and continue the same approach. 

This is the type of system practised in Singapore that has produced convoluted systems, not only in CPF but in health care, immigration and many other areas of our life.