Category: Financial Literacy EN

Believe it or not, a bank loan can turn out to be more expensive than a loan from a moneylender. For one bank the profit rate for its ‘Islamic’ personal loan can be as high as 42% per annum. The profit rate, like the interest rate, ensures profits for the bank on a loan extended to the public. Bank Negara should not condone this ‘Ah Long’-like profit rate. The profit on this particular...

Bank Negara’s proposal to increase the cost of using cheques from 15 sen to 65 sen beginning April 2014, is unwarranted and should be withdrawn. Though Bank Negara wants to encourage consumers to move to using electronic payment, it is premature to do so as online transactions too have their limits. Firstly, there is the question of safety and reliability. Is it safe to transfer large sums of...

The Consumers Association of Penang calls on the Malaysian Bar Council to immediately direct its members to refrain from billing charges for preparing Change of Name forms and Vesting Orders for changing bank names in charge documents when discharging properties from banks that have changed names due to mergers. The cost of changing the banks’ names in the charge documents are to be borne by...

Bank Negara should not loosen its new car loan guidelines as suggested by the Proton Edar Dealers Association of Malaysia (Pedar). According to news reports,  Peda claims that  members’ income have been affected because with the new guidelines, only 30%  of the potential car buyers  have managed to secure  hire-purchase loans. However there are good reasons why the guidelines are needed...

Scratch and win and other scams have been going on in the country for many years now. The most distressful development of this mode of openly cheating consumers is the standard response from the authorities: The victims are to be blamed for being gullible. While this is true to a fair extent, what bothers consumers is, why is such an illegal activity continuing to flourish in all parts of the...

CAP calls on the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to stall the move by the telco companies to impose the 6% service tax on mobile prepaid users. The telco companies claim that they have been for absorbing the tax since its imposition in 1998 and due to dwindling revenues, they have now to pass it on to the consumers. To say that their revenues are dwindling is far from true....

5.9 Million Members and RM38 Billion Assets in Malaysian Cooperatives Cooperatives have been in the country since 1922. In 2006 we had about 5,000 cooperatives with 5.9 million members and total assets of RM38.3 billion. That is a lot of assets and a lot of people involved, both of which give rise to concerns about the cooperative movement. Firstly, are the cooperatives heading for trouble again?...

1) Koperasi Wawasan Pekerja-Pekerja Malaysia Berhad (KOWAJA) RM7,980 Deducted from Loan A member applied for a RM80,000 loan in January 2009  but only RM33,995 was deposited into his account. He was never given a copy of the loan agreement. When he said he wanted to return the  RM33,995 as it was not what he applied for, he was told that he would have to pay a fee of  RM2,000.  His  February...

1) ANGKASA: Alleged Fraud at Umbrella Co-op Angkatan Koperasi Kebangsaan Malaysia (ANGKASA) commenced in 1977 as the umbrella cooperative of the country. However it has become obvious that all is not well in ANGKASA. Its former President Royal Professor Ungku Aziz voiced his disappointment that SKM’s investigation into the alleged misappropriation of funds was still not completed in January...