Umno's populist push to allow large sums of money to be withdrawn from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) may ultimately come back to bite contributors, according to veteran newsman A Kadir Jasin.

"If the EPF contributors are allowed to withdraw their savings at will, as suggested by these popularity seekers, the pension fund will have to sell billions upon billions of investments to raise cash to pay them.

"This will depress share prices and may even force it to sell its assets at a loss.

"In time, it may not even have enough capital to generate meaningful returns...