Comments
Retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has invested ₹6,577 crore in equities till March 31, Lok Sabha was told on Friday.
This entire sum has been invested in exchange traded funds (ETFs) of Nifty and Sensex-based index, Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance, said in a written reply.
Till end-March 2016, the EPFO has not invested in individual stocks, according to the reply.
The government-notified pattern of investment of EPFO permits the retirement fund body to invest in equity and related instruments to the extent of 5 to 15 per cent. To maximise its earnings on investments, the CBT has decided to invest only in ETFs.
No change in norm There is also no plan on part of the government to change the notified investment pattern, Sinha added. .
He also said that the government is aware of the risks of more investment of funds of EPFO in the stock market. Therefore, the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the EPF has decided to invest only 5 per cent of the investible surplus in ETFs of Nifty and Sensex-based index, he said.
Nearly 64 years after its formation, the EPFO had in August last year announced its entry into the stock markets with its decision to invest only in ETFs.
Initially, the EPFO had decided to invest 75 per cent of the investible corpus in SBI-ETF Nifty and the remaining 25 per cent in SBI Sensex ETF.
Since August 2015, the S&P BSE Sensex fell 8.84 per cent and the NSE’s Nifty 50 tumbled 8.1 per cent.
Earlier, the government had made it clear that the EPFO investments in stock markets are not backed by any guarantee (by the government) as these are subject to market movements.
In reply to another query, Sinha said that as on April 22, Aadhar seeding has been done in 29,80,418 accounts out of 48,42,123 central pension accounts with PSU banks.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.