Often criticised for offering less attractive interest rates than banks for most of the last five years, retirement fund manager EPFO hiked the annual rate of returns on employee provident funds to 9.5 per cent in 2010 and this time around, the banks were left behind.
The finance ministry wants the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation to bypass the central board of trustees when deciding how to invest a portion of the Rs 5-lakh crore (Rs 5 trillion) provident fund corpus in the capital market.
India's biggest state-run pension fund, the Employees Provident Fund, will aim to keep interest rate returns high, Labour Minister Sahib Singh said on Friday, despite an overall easier monetary climate.\n\n
A parliamentary committee has suggested 'consent of the recipient' was a must in case a National Akademi decided to confer an award to prevent the honour's return by the individual for political reasons as it was 'disgraceful' to the country.
The first phase of computerisation of the EPFO offices were to be completed within a year of the EPFO's apex body -- Central Board of Trustees' (CBT)-- approval of the project in April last year.
The decision would leave a surplus of Rs 15.26 crore.
There is widening gap between what the government's premier retirement fund makes on its investments and what it offers to employees. The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) makes the bulk of its investments in government-related securities. In other words, it lends to central and state governments and related entities. The interest it gets from these instruments is largely what it uses to pay interest to its subscribers.
Law enforcement officials from the US Department of Homeland Security have started visiting gurdwaras in New York and New Jersey to check for the presence of illegal immigrants, drawing a sharp reaction from some Sikh organisations which see such actions as a threat to the sanctity of their faith. The Trump administration has rescinded the Biden administration's guidelines that protected places of worship from immigration enforcement actions, leading to concerns that gurdwaras are being targeted. Sikh organisations argue that gurdwaras are not just places of worship but also vital community centres and that surveillance and raids by armed law enforcement would burden religious exercise and limit the ability of Sikhs to gather and associate with one another.
In his address after more than 75,000 people were given appointment letters for various government jobs in the first tranche, Modi acknowledged the challenges facing the economy the world over with many countries hit by a record inflation and unemployment and said India is making every effort to come out of the situation unscathed.
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's key advisory body, Finance and Investment Committee, would meet next month to take a view on parking 3 to 5 per cent of its large corpus of Rs 2.57 lakh crore (Rs 2.57 trillion)in the capital market.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, HMT and Maruti Udyog Ltd are among the corporates that defaulted in remitting their provident fund share to the Employees Provident Fund Organisation
The argument put forth is that withdrawals from a long-term investment avenue leave investors with a lower corpus on retirement.
Over 4.7 crore (47 million) employees are likely to get an interest of 8.5 per cent in 2010-11 on their provident fund deposits of about Rs 2.5 lakh crore (Rs 2.5 trillion), a return authorities have been giving for the past five years.
From bhikshus of Ashokan 3rd century BC and medieval Sufis to Oxfam, Omidyar and Soros now, non-State actors have any real power only when they work in conjunction with a real State, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
In view of allegations by trade unions that Employees Provident Fund Organisation was "fraught with corruption", the Labour Minstry has convened a Parliamentary Consultative Committee meeting on December 14 to discuss the functioning of the EPFO.
Retirement fund body EPFO added 16.26 lakh subscribers on a net basis in November 2022, which is 16.5 per cent higher compared to a year ago, the labour ministry said on Friday. The provisional payroll data of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) released on Friday by the ministry highlighted that the EPFO has added 16.26 lakh net members in the month of November 2022. The data indicate a 25.67 per cent increase in net additions compared to the previous month in October 2022, a labour ministry statement said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says a higher interest rate on Employees Provident Fund would depend on whether the Employees Provident Fund Organisation could afford a higher payout.
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation on Wednesday categorically ruled out differential rates for its 3 crore subscribers.
'By March-end, we should have closure of the PNC portfolio. After completion of PNC acquisition.'
A decision on the interest rate for close to 60 million active subscribers of the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is likely to be taken in the next Central Board of Trustee (CBT) meeting, starting on March 25. A letter from the social security organisation regarding the convening of the 233rd CBT meeting was sent to all the board members last week, soliciting their presence in the meeting. Although the venue and the agenda haven't been drawn out yet, sources familiar with the matter say that the interest rate is unlikely to go below 8 per cent level amid a rising interest rate scenario across the globe.
In a bid to provide jobs to the youth, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday proposed to launch an ambitious scheme for providing internship opportunities in 500 top companies to 1 crore youth over a five-year period.
The Employees Provident Fund Organisation had paid 9.5 per cent interest in 2010-11, before scaling it down to 8.25 per cent in 2011-12 fiscal.
Gross enrolments of new subscribers with ESIC were 1.49 crore during the entire financial year 2018-19, the National Statistical Office (NSO) said in a report.
EPFO manages a corpus of about Rs 257,000 crore with subscribers' base of over 4.5 crore.
In a bid to earn higher return for its 40 million subscribers, the country's biggest provident fund EPFO is exploring the possibility of investing a small portion of its assets in equities.
Following the footsteps of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation has entrusted the UTI Investor Services with the job of creating the required infrastructure for issuing its much-bragged social security number.
'This year overall hiring has seen a slight improvement as compared to the dip seen during the last financial year.'
The National Social Security Number will be issued to the 4 crore (40 million) members covered by the scheme on the lines of the Permanent Account Number (PAN) given by the income tax department.
Since the imposition of lockdown on March 25 by the government to contain the COVID-19 spread, businesses have been facing liquidity or cash crunch, leading to difficulties in paying their mandatory provident fund dues.
'A long-term investor with a 4 to 5 year horizon could invest in this theme via SIPs.'
While the country's unemployment rate is falling, the quality of employment seems to have taken a hit. The pace of formalisation slowed in the five months of the current financial year (April-August) with more than half a million fewer formal jobs created in the period compared to the same period last year, according to data from the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). The payroll data showed that cumulatively 4.92 million new subscribers joined the social security organisation between April-August this year, compared to 5.51 million subscribers in the same period in the previous year, reflecting a 10.7 per cent decline in the number of new payrolls created.
Despite the labour ministry's claims that it is vigourosly chasing the employees provident fund defaulters, the money that employers owed to the fund mounted to Rs 1,758 crore till July, but EPFO might be able to realise only Rs 571 crore.
Only Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are ahead of her.
