| The dividend for the first lot of Economic Restructuring Shares (ERS) will be credited to shareholders on 1 March 2004 together with the yearly dividend for the New Singapore Shares (NSS). The dividends will take the form of bonus ERS and NSS. A total of 16 million bonus NSS and 10 million bonus ERS will be credited to the accounts of 793,000 NSS shareholders and 615,000 ERS shareholders respectively.
The dividend credited to each individual is 4.1% of the outstanding number of NSS and ERS that he holds (and has not encashed) as at 15 February 2004 and 31 December 2003 respectively. This is the sum of the minimum guaranteed dividend of 3% and an extra dividend, of 1.1%, which is the real GDP growth rate achieved in 2003.
Dividends will be credited on 1st March of every year from this year to 2007 for NSS and 2008 for ERS. To earn the maximum amount of dividends, NSS and ERS shareholders are encouraged to keep their NSS until 2007 and their ERS until 2008 when the schemes terminate.
Members can check the number of their NSS and ERS held and the dividends allocated from the NSS/ERS website at www.ers.org.sg from 1 March 2004 onwards.
Alternatively, they can also call the NSS Hotline at 1800-8-NSS-NSS (1800-8-677-677) for NSS enquiries or ERS Hotline at 1800-5-ERS-ERS (1800-5-377-377) for ERS enquiries.
In addition, members can also check the number of ERS (including bonus ERS) they have, through DBS, OCBC and UOB ATMs if the ERS shareholder is an ATM card holder of the respective bank from 1 March 2004 to 31 March 2004. |