The Employees Provident Fund Organisation or the EPFO has recently given a green signal to the development of centralised IT-enabled systems. This will ensure that employees no longer have to transfer the money in their provident funds when they change jobs. After the move to the development of the systems by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or C-DAC, an employee’s provident fund number will remain the same even if they change their jobs. This means that they will not have to worry about transferring the accounts. This decision was taken at the 229th meeting of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT),the apex decision-making body of EPFO.
The meeting, which was held on November 20, was chaired by Union labour minister of state Bhupender Yadav. “Post this, the field functionalities will move on a central database in a phased manner enabling smoother operations and enhanced service delivery. The centralised system will facilitate de‐duplication and merger of all PF accounts of any member. It will remove the requirement of transfer of account on change of job,” said a statement by the government.
The retirement fund organisation has also made the decision of giving more power to its advisory body Finance Investment and Audit Committee (FIAC) in terms of taking a call on the investment in new asset classes.
“At present, we have decided to invest in only newly added government instruments (bonds and InvITs). There is no percentage for that. It will be decided on a case to case basis by FIAC,” Yadav was quoted as saying after the meeting.
The Board decided to empower the Finance Investment & Audit Committee (FIAC) to decide upon the investment options, on case-to-case basis, for investment in all such asset classes which are included in the Pattern of Investment as notified by Government of India, as per a press release.
“If we want to provide a high rate of interest then we have to follow guidelines of the finance ministry. There are certain instruments (prescribed in norms) where we were not able to invest due to various reasons. Now, we would be in a position to invest in those instruments,” Union labour secretary Sunil Barthwal was quoted as saying after the meeting.
At present, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Power Grid Corporation (PGCIL) have launched public sector infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs). The EPFO would also go for public sector bonds.
The government recently added new instruments like InvITs in the Pattern of Investment for pension funds. “It has been decided in principal that on case-to-case basis, the FIAC will take a decision in this regard. The CBT has authorised the FIAC to do so. FIAC will take a decision like in case of NHAI and Power Grid (InvITs),” he said.
The government recently added new instruments like InvITs in the Pattern of Investment for pension funds. “It has been decided in principal that on case-to-case basis, the FIAC will take a decision in this regard. The CBT has authorised the FIAC to do so. FIAC will take a decision like in case of NHAI and Power Grid (InvITs),” he said.
In a separate development, the EPFO on Saturday said that it has added 15.41 lakh subscribers in September 2021, reflecting a growing trend in net payroll additions post the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
(With inputs from PTI)
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