Good news: Portable provident fund account numbers coming soon

New Delhi: Here's some good news for people employed in the organised sector.  Retirement fund body EPFO is reportedly planning to provide portable numbers to salaried individuals. 

The move might stem the trend of premature withdrawal which most people prefer over getting their accounts transferred while switching jobs.

Once finalised, the decision will directly benefit about 4.8 crore PF account holders in India. A similar plan to issue unique numbers was scrapped on an earlier occasion. The plan now is to allow subscribers to tie their provident fund accounts with their existing PAN, unique identification number or national population register number.

'EPFO interest rate may top 8.25 pc'

EPFO’s interest rate for its over 50 million subscribers for this fiscal could be higher than 8.25 per cent provided during 2011-12, the Labour Minister, Mr Mallikarjun Kharge, had earlier said.

“Suppose if our income goes up, it may be beyond 8.25 per also,” Mr Kharge told reporters when asked whether the Employees Provident Fund Organisation has decided to pay 8.6 per cent rate this fiscal.

The Minister said: “We will distribute interest (among subscribers) based on our income...this is what I said in Rajya Sabha. We will see what our total revenue is and based on that we can give.’’

A section of the media had reported last week that the EPFO has decided to pay 8.6 per cent rate of return this fiscal to its account holders, based on the Minister’s reply to a debate on labour issues in the Rajya Sabha.

The Minister explained that he had spoken about the 8.6 per cent rate of return in the context of the Government’s decision to increase the rate of return on Special Deposit Scheme.

The EPFO has parked about Rs 55,000 crore in the SDS. Its total corpus is around Rs 3 lakh crore.

There was a hue and cry when the EPFO had last month slashed the interest rate on PF deposits to 8.25 per cent for 2011-12 from 9.5 per cent in 2010-11.