EPFO board defers decision on equity investment

The central board of trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Saturday deferred a decision on investing 3-5 per cent of its Rs257,000 crore corpus in equity market.

The board of trustees also put off a decision on the issue of allowing EPFO to purchase government-backed bonds with maturity period of more than 10 years from the secondary market.

The board is expected to meet in the next two or three months to decide on these issues.

"We have not scheduled the next meeting of the CBT. But surely in the next two or three months, we would meet again to take up remaining issues," labour minister Mallikarjun Kharge, who also heads the CBT, said after the meeting.

"Since the members wanted a detailed discussion on various investments of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) corpus, the matter of making investments in stock indices, government-backed bonds and increasing the minimum wage limit for the purpose of provident fund have been postponed," Kharge said.

The board, at its 188th meeting, also postponed a decision on raising the minimum wage limit for mandatory deduction of provident fund by employers from the current level of Rs6,500 a month to Rs15,000 per month.