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EPFO interest rate for 2021-22 slashed from 8.1% to 8.5%, lowest in over 4 decades

NEW DELHI: The central board of trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has slashed the interest rate on provident fund deposits to 8.1 per cent for 2021-22 down from 8.5 per cent that was steady for the last two years, 2020-21 and 2019-20. 

The EPFO had provided an 8.65 per cent rate of interest to its subscribers for 2016-17 and 8.55 per cent in 2017-18. The EPFO return rates were lowest in 1977-78 when the fund organisation had credited 8 per cent interest. 

Although this is the highest rate of interest offered by any saving schemes offered by government banks, postal and other schemes, however this is the lowest rate of return in close to over four and a half decades offered by the largest social security organisations in the world. At present it maintains 24.77 crore accounts (Annual Report 2019-20) pertaining to its members.

Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav told reporters in Guwahati where the board meeting happened that the interest rate of 8.1% was worked out based on EPFO’s estimated income for the year pegged at Rs 76,768 crore which will leave the fund with a surplus of Rs 450 crore. 

The opposition parties were quite to react to the lowering of EPFO interest with the Congress party with its General Secretary and spokesperson Randeep Surjewala saying that the reduction in EPFO interest rate was a 'return gift' of the Bharatiya Janata Party to people following its victory in the just-concluded assembly polls. 

Surjewala tweeted, "The income of 84 per cent people of the country has decreased. Is it right to attack the savings of crores of employees on the basis of electoral victory?"

Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) tweeted, "Post these assembly election results Modi govt mounts further attacks on the working people with a vengeance. Resist this attack that comes in the background of mounting hardships with job loses, price rise etc., with all our might."

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