EPFO, ESI decision likely next week

The Union Labour Ministry is likely to take a final call on investment of its huge corpus — Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees State Insurance (ESI) — totalling Rs 7 lakh crore in the stock market or elsewhere soon, said Union Minister of State for Labour (Independent Charge) Bandaru Dattatreya at a press conference here on Sunday.

He said his ministry would be meeting early next week to take a final decision on the issue, adding that computerisation of all the transactions under the Labour Ministry through 2,200 offices had brought transparency and accountability in maintaining PF accounts and fund-pooling.

“We have a staggering Rs 28,000 crore under a non-performing account due to lack of proper database and non-linking with Aadhaar. Hence the ministry had made Aadhaar-linking a mandatory for all EPF and ESI transactions,” he said.

Dattatreya said the ministry has also decided to increase the wage ceiling of EPFs from Rs 6,500 to Rs 15,000, and also provide a minimum pension of Rs 1,000 as against Rs 100 or Rs 200 earlier.

An Online Transfer Claim Portal has been launched to facilitate EPFO transfer updates through the Internet. Members have to register on the portal to access the services.
Almost 26 lakh members have registered on the portal as on 1 January 2015. They can view and print their account statements as many times and whenever they want without intermediation of their employers.

Dattatreya also said establishments can now remit their statutory EPF dues electronically from any of the 58 banks that allow electronic payments.

All payments to pensioners are being made electronically through the use of core-banking platform of banks, he added.