We refer to Temasek’s letter “Temasek doesn’t invest or manage CPF savings” (Straits Times Forum Jun 4) to  last Saturday’s article (“Ways to improve CPF”) (which) quoted an unnamed person as saying he suspected the Central Provident Fund Minimum Sum was raised “because Temasek or GIC lost money overseas”.

It states that “Temasek does not invest or manage the savings of CPF members.”

Since CPF funds have been transferred to the Government by way of special non-marketable government securities pegged to the respective interest rates of the different CPF accounts – does it then mean that the Government may utilise the funds at its discretion – such as for investment or to purchase assets?

If this is the case, how does Temasek (or for that matter any of the entities that manage Government funds and the Reserves), know for sure that the capital injections from the Government to them over the years (39 years in Temasek’s case)?

In this connection, unlike arguably, practically all other pension funds in the world, our CPF may not have the same standards of transparency and accountability – whereby the paper trail of pension funds may be more transparent, as the citizens know where the funds went to, how much the returns are, who exactly are managing what, the costs of managing the funds, where and in what form the fund’s assets are now, etc?

SY Lee and Leong Sze Hian