Hardik Tokas
Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Interest for the year 2019-20 is pending of 4 million employees registered with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO). It’s been one and a half months since the government has announced that around 6 crore EPFO subscribers will receive 8.5% (estimated at Rs. 60,700 crore) for the financial year 2020 in their accounts.
The reason 4 million employees are not able to receive EPF interest is due to KYC mismatch of employee details with the employers. Mint reported that the field offices of the EPFO are in contact with establishments for the delay in EPF payment to the subscribers.
“If there is a mismatch between employee details provided by the employer and the one with EPFO even for a few employees, the payout is held up for the establishment,” another official told the Live Mint.
“Yes, some 8-10% of EPF subscribers’ interest payout for 2019-20 FY has not happened as yet. There was some mismatch in employee KYC details. EPFO credits interest (in batches) establishment-wise instead of on an individual subscriber basis,” authorities told Mint.
Due to lockdown amid pandemic and fall of the stock market, the fund manager delayed the sale of equity investments to pay 8.5% interest for 2019-20.
“We had said that we would endeavor to provide 8.5% rate of interest on EPF for 2019-20. We have issued a notification to provide the same. We have also begun the process to credit the said rate of interest into subscribers account,” said labor minister Santosh Gangwar in a video message.
EPFO credits the compound interest monthly based on the statutory rate decided by the government every year. In September 2020, EPFO had decided in its trustees’ meet to split the interest into two installments 8.5% and 0.35%.
