The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Saturday fixed 8.1 per cent as rate of interest on EPF deposits for the year 2021-22.
In the previous year (2020-21), the fund manager kept the interest rate on savings steady at 8.5% but Saturday’s downward revision is lowest in years. The decision to lower the interest rate, a widely watched working-class metric of savings, will not cheer the nearly 60 million active EPFO subscribers, for whom provident fund is often the only mode to save funds for retirement.
Provident fund savings are mandatory under the Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. “In today’s meet, EPFO consensus has been that it will pay an 8.1% interest on deposits based on the current position of earnings and deposits of the organisation,” Virjesh Upadhyay, a board member of EPFO,
