EPFO considering housing scheme for subscribers

NEW DELHI: Retirement fund body EFPO is working on a housing scheme for its over 5 crore subscribers and its trustees board has set up a panel in this regard.

"The issue of providing houses as a social security benefits to the subscribers of the schemes ... has been discussed in Central Board of Trustees ( CBT) meetings," Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in written reply to the Lok Sabha today.

"The CBT in its 205th meeting held on December 19, 2014 has decided to constitute a sub-committee to consider the issue," the minister said.

The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation ( EPFO) manages a huge corpus of Rs 6 lakh crore with average annual incremental deposits of Rs 70,000 crore.

In a separate reply, the minister said Rs 27,448.54 crore lying in inoperative accounts as on March 31, 2014.

In 2013-14, EPFO disbursed Rs 4,316.7 crore from inoperative account, Rs 2,890.39 crore in 2012-13 and Rs 955.51 crore in 2011-12.

As of September 2014, total number of PF accounts being handled by EPFO are 13.10 crore.

The minister said that number of persons getting pension under Employees' Pension Scheme as on December 31, 2014 is at 52.86 lakh.

As per the actuarial valuation report, the deficit of Rs 7,832.74 crore in terms of present value is less than 2.5 per cent of total liability and is not a matter of concern, the minister said in a reply to the lower house.