NEW DELHI: Bringing parity with the establishments covered directly by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), govt has widened the debt investment options for exempted establishments by permitting investment in rupee-denominated bonds issued by four major global financial institutions, provided they have a minimum outstanding maturity of three years.These four institutions are – International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (part of World Bank), International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and New Development Bank. According to the pattern of investment notified by the finance ministry, EPFO can invest anywhere between 20% and 45% of its corpus into debt instruments floated by corporates, govt or global multilateral institutions. Exempted establishments will now be able to diversify their investable corpus away from domestic corporate debt instruments and ensure stable long term yields.The move is likely to benefit nearly 1,000 exempted trusts, most of which are in public sector undertakings and have nearly 30 lakh members. They are allowed to manage own PF trusts under Section 17 of EPF & MP Act, 1952, provided they provide benefits equal to or better than standard EPFO scheme.Exempted establishments have been barred from declaring interest rates more than two percentage points above the annual rate announced by the EPFO, as some trusts earlier declared much higher rates.
