FUTURE pensioners are seeing their benefits slip away with each extra day taken to get the Mandatory Provident Fund's administrative machinery up and running, industry sources say.
'Every day it's delayed is another day we're not saving,' said Rob Pocknee, National Mutual Insurance's general manager for MPF and employee benefits.
Compounding had such a powerful impact on investment returns that slowness in starting the universal pension scheme was putting Hong Kong workers' future retirement benefits at significant risk, he said.
Two years and eight months, to the day, elapsed from the August 1995 passage of the original barebones MPF legislation to the final approval early this month of the Government's application for $5.6 billion in funding to get the programme off the ground.
Assuming employees and employers are able to start contributing to the scheme in late 1999 or early 2000, as suggested by the Secretary for Financial Services, Rafael Hui Si-yan, the intervening period will have stretched to 4.5 years in all.
A quick click of the mouse reveals that the employee's nest egg upon retiring at age 65 will be 28 per cent smaller ($4,652,814 instead of $6,442,159) than it would have been without a four-year delay.