Retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund (EPF) on Thursday decided to retain 8.5 percent rate of interest on provident fund deposits for the current financial year. EPFO has more than five crore active subscribers
The decision was taken by the board in a meeting held in Srinagar under the chairmanship of Union Minister of State for Labour Santosh Kumar Gangwar and the interest will be credited to the subscribers' account as soon as it is notified in the government gazette.
A labour ministry spokesman said the EPF Organisation has been consistently generating returns of not less than 8.5 percent since the financial year 2014. He said a high EPF interest rate, along with compounding, makes a significant difference to gains of the subscribers. EPFO over the years has been able to distribute higher income to its members, through various economic cycles with minimal credit risk. Considering the high credit profile of the EPFO investment, the interest rate of EPFO is considerably higher than other comparable investment avenues available for subscribers, he added.
Net new enrolments with the EPCO grew by 24 percent to 1.25 million in December, indicating a return to the pre-Covid levels of subscriber growth for the EPFO, according to the payroll data released last Saturday.
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