EPFO meeting to decide on investing funds in stocks postponed

The meeting of the EPFO's key advisory body Finance and Investment Committee (FIC) to take a call on investing funds in stock market scheduled for October 24 has been postponed.

"The FIC meeting scheduled on Saturday, has been postponed. The schedule for the next meeting has not been finalised so far," a Labour Ministry source said.

FIC's earlier meeting on October 8 to decide on parking 3 to 5 per cent of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) huge corpus of Rs 2.57 lakh crore had remained inconclusive and it was decided that members would meet again to discuss the matter.

In order to facilitate consultation process, it was also decided that representatives of the employees and employers would meet for an hour ahead of the October 24 meeting.

The decision to invest small portion of the EPFO corpus in equity or other instruments would result in about Rs 13,000 crore flowing into the capital markets.

Several trade union representatives have expressed reservations about permitting EPFO to park part of its funds in the stock market and are of the view that it is not proper to invest retirement funds in risky instruments.

At an earlier meeting of the FIC on August 18, an EPFO official had suggested that the organisation could look for investment in stock indices.