Heena Sharma Blog

Retirement fund body EPFO on Friday said it has settled 137,000 provident fund withdrawal claims worth Rs 280 crore to provide relief to subscribers during the lockdown. " Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has processed about 137,000 claims across the country disbursing an amount of Rs 279.65 crore under a new provision especially formulated by amending the EPF Scheme to help subscribers fight Covid-19," a labour ministry statement said. According to the statement, remittances have already started taking place. EPFO has settled these claims in the past 10 days. The system as it stands today is processing all applications which are fully KYC (know your customer) compliant within less than 72 hours. Read More

In what could bring cheer to 60 million salaried employees, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) may raise interest rates from 8.55 per cent currently. Three officials with knowledge of the matter told Live Mint that if not raised, it will at least be retained at the existing level, making it one of the most rewarding savings scheme. Although the EPFO rate is declared in December every year, there was a slight delay in 2018 as the account audit was still being done. It is now expected to be announced on February 1. There is little scope for reducing the rate and efforts would be made to increase the return, Prabhakar Banasure, member of EPFO’s central board of trustees, told the business daily. The interest rate would be in line with what the government recently announced incentives such as a nearly 50 per cent hike in incentives for frontline health workers, including those working at Integrated Child Development Scheme centres (anganwadis). The government...