PF Interest Increased: Big News! EPFO Employees Interest Rates And Pension Will Increase In Next Month | Know Details Here
EPFO board to meet after the state assembly election results are announced in the second week of March. The retirement fund paid 8.5 percent interest rate to millions of its subscribers in 2020-21.
As the new fiscal year is set to begin, the central board of trustees, or CBT, of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, or EPFO, is reportedly scheduled to meet to discuss a key issue. The members of the CBT, according to a report, will meet in the first week of March to finalise the rates of interest on provident fund deposits for 2021-22.
According to media reports, EPFO employees can get great news in March. The interest rate on Provident Fund deposits for 2021-22 can be finalized in March. For this, the Central Board of EPFO has called a meeting in Guwahati early next month. It is believed that in this meeting, under the chairmanship of Labor Minister Bhupendra Yadav, the EPFO Board can take a decision on the EPF interest rate for 2021-22. Along with this, there can also be a discussion about increasing the minimum amount of pension.
Last year, In March, the EPFO board recommended 8.5% payout for FY21. EPFO has pegged an income of around ₹70,300 crore in the previous fiscal, including around ₹4,000 crore from selling a portion of its equity investments.
The 8.5% interest rate compares favourably with other provident funds such as general provident fund (GPF) and savings schemes such as the public provident fund (7.1%) and the national savings certificate (6.8%). The finance ministry has in the past insisted on bringing down EPFO interest rates, but EPFO board has kept interest rates high even while maintaining a small surplus.
This will coincide with government employees and pensioners getting their dearness allowance and dearness relief hike. Last year the Union Cabinet approved an increase of 3 percentage points on the Dearness Allowance (DA) Dearness Relief (DR) for central government employees and pensioners to 31% effective from 1 July, 2021.
Finance ministry has given its formal nod to EPFO’s proposal to retain interest rate at 8.5% for the second consecutive year,” a government official said under condition of anonymity.
Earlier in the year 2011-12, the PF rate was 8.25 percent, in 2013-14 EPFO used to give 8.75 percent interest on PF deposits, in 2012-13 the PF interest rate reached 8.5 percent. The interest rate of PF was 8.65 percent in 2018-19, 8.65 percent in the year 2016-17 and 8.55 percent in the year 2017-18 and the interest rate for 2019-20 was fixed at 8.5 percent, which is the highest in the last 7 years. At present, interest is being given at the rate of 8.5 percent on the money deposited in PF.