January 21, 2002

    The Central Board of Trustees is to declare rate of interest to Employment Provident Fund subscribers at its meeting being held here tomorrow. The meeting will be presided over by the Labour Minister Shri Sharad Yadav. The rate of interest to the EPF subscribers, which was paid at the rate of 12% since 1989-90 was reduced from July 2000 to 11%.The rate was further reduced to 9.5% for the current financial year. The interest is being paid on monthly running balance since 1^st April, 1993.

    The Corpus of the Employment Provident Fund was Rs.59,938.63 crore as on 31^st December 2001. Of this 79.55% is in investment holding in Special Deposit Scheme, 8.18 % in Public Sector/Financial Institutions, 7.06% in Central Government Loans, 3.95% in State Government Loans and 1.26% in Government Guaranteed Loans. The Fund is being invested according to pattern of investment holding prescribed by the Government of India from time to time. The meeting while declaring the rate of interest will have to take into consideration the continued fall in yield on Bonds and Securities during 2000 and 2001 due to easy liquidity, poor credit off take, cut in CRR by the Reserve Bank of India etc.

    The Meeting will also consider proposed amendments to the Employees Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provision Act 1952 in lieu of the mobility of workforce from formal to informal sector due to the increase in the outsourcing of work. The proposed amendments include policy changes for increase in coverage, reducing the threshold limit for coverage, introduction of unemployment insurance for PF subscribers having lost jobs due to on-going economic restructuring,