‘Does that also mean more of our money will be locked by CPF?’ — Netizens on CPF monthly salary ceiling increase

SINGAPORE — Singaporeans have questions of their own in response to Lawrence Wong’s recent announcement on the 2023 budget. With regard to the CPF monthly salary ceiling being set to increase to S$8,000 by 2026, netizens have raised concerns over whether this means their money will be “locked”.

On Tuesday (Feb 14) afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong delivered the highly anticipated Budget 2023 address. One of the announcements he made was regarding the monthly salary ceiling of The Central Provident Fund (CPF), a social security scheme to which employers and employees must contribute.

The current CPF monthly salary ceiling is S$6,000. It will be raised to S$6,300 in September 2023, then to S$6,800 in January 2024, then to S$7,400 in January 2025, and then again to S$8,000 in January 2026.

For employees who are 55 years old and younger, the contribution to their CPF is 20 per cent of their monthly wages. As for the hiring party, the employers contribute 17 per cent of the wages of the employees.

In response to this news, Singaporeans are raising questions of their own, with a handful raising concerns over how long they will need to wait in order to withdraw their CPF savings.

“Does that also mean more of our money will be locked by CPF? Wow!” wrote one concerned netizen.

Another went so far as to say, “How does this help Singaporeans to save? (The money) goes inside CPF we all know can never be taken out even (if) you die also cannot takeout.”

To this, another netizen responded, “What you cannot touch will be touched by your beneficiary/beneficiaries, they will love you deep deep.”