Photo: Ramesh Pathania/MintNew Delhi: A parliamentary panel has asked the labour ministry to conduct special inspection or audit of private Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) trusts that have been found to be investing their workers’ retirement savings in own firms through mutual funds. The private trusts, regulated by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), maintain Provident Fund (PF) accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government. These trusts are called exempted establishments because they do not deposit EPF contributions of their employees with the EPFO. The panel noted that as on December 31, 2016, the total corpus of these trusts was around Rs2.57 lakh crore, including the unclaimed EPF amount of Rs5,475 crore. It also asked the ministry to explore the possibility of depositing the unclaimed amount so revived in the special reserve fund (SRF).

Source: Mint April 09, 2017 06:22 UTC