The Employees Provident Fund Office is planning to allocate a unique account number to EPF subscribers, that will last for full span of service. The Regional Provident Fund Commissioner in Bangalore, K.Nayayana informed that this will help the subscriber at the time of transfer and change of job. The subscriber's contribution will go to the same account number throughout his or her career.

Speaking on the sidelines of a function, the Regional Commissioner informed that the Headoffice is also working on the possibility of enhancing upper limit of EPF subscribers from the present cut off salary of 6500 rupees to 15,000 rupees as is done in the case of Insured Persons of ESIC scheme.

Mr.Narayana said, due to IT solutions, around 90 per cent of claims of subscribers are processed and payments made within 30 days. This has also made it possible for them to track the subscription amount that has accumulated in their account. He added that Government is mulling over the idea of increasing pension of EPF subscribers to 1000 rupees.

Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge has said an e-passbook facility, in which individuals can view and print their employee provident fund passbooks without having to go through employers, would be launched by the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

Speaking at the 200th meeting of the Central Board of Trustees of the EPFO in the capital today, the Minister emphasised upon the increasing the scope of investment inclusive of the safety of funds.
The Board today gave green signal to the retirement fund body to park its funds in fixed deposits up to five years, short term securities and certificate of deposits of public sector banks. The EPFO has a corpus of Rs 3.5 lakh crore and needs to increase its returns on investments to provide higher rate of interest to subscribers.

AIR correspondent said the provident fund was an amount that was disbursed to an individual after he left a job or retired. The amount is contributed by the employer as well as the employee over the duration of an employee's service in an organisation.

The Indian Employees' Provident Fund Organisation is one of the largest provident fund institutions in the world in terms of members and volume of financial transactions that it has been carrying on.

The government has increased interest rates on General Provident Fund, GPF, State Provident Funds and Special Deposit Scheme, SDS, for the current financial year to 8.8 per cent. The rates were currently at 8.6 per cent. An official statement said the new rates will be applicable from April this year.

The revised interest rates on government provident funds will benefit the subscribers of General Provident Fund (Central Services), Contributory Provident Fund (India), All India Services Provident Fund, State Railway Provident Fund and General Provident Fund (Defence Services), the Indian Ordnance Department Provident Fund, the Indian Ordnance Factories Workmen’s Provident Fund, the Indian Naval Dockyard Workmen’s Provident Fund, the Defence Services Officers Provident Fund and the Armed Forces Personnel Provident Fund.

The government on Monday raised interest rates on post office-operated small savings like Monthly Income Scheme (MIS) and Public Provident Fund (PPF) by up to 0.5 per cent. The objective is to make them more attractive to investors. An official release said interest rates on time deposits of one and two years have been increased by 0.5 per cent each to 8.2 per cent and 8.3 per cent. 

Rates for popular MIS has been hiked by 0.3 per cent to 8.5 per cent. Interest rate on PPF has been increased by 0.2 per cent to 8.8 per cent. The new rates will be effective from April 1, 2012 and will remain valid during 2012-13. There has been no change in the savings deposit rate which has been retained at 4 per cent.