EPFO to hit stock market through ETF route on Aug 6

Retirement fund body EPFO will kickstart the process of investing in the stock market on August 6 with an initial corpus of around Rs 5,000 crore to be invested through ETFs in the current fiscal.
"We are making our first investment in equity (market) on August 6 in Mumbai. The Labour Minister (Bandaru Dattatreya) will preside over the function," EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner K K Jalan said while addressing an Assocham conference here.
Labour Ministry had notified new investment pattern for Employees' Provident Fund Organsiation (EPFO) in April allowing the body to invest minimum of 5 per cent and up to 15 per cent of its funds in equity or equity related schemes.

However, the EPFO management has decided to invest 5 per cent of its incremental deposits in ETFs only during the current fiscal.
On the size of investment, Jalan said, "I also don't know. It depends upon the market. Finance Ministry norms allow me to invest up to 15 per cent (of incremental deposits) but CBT allows me to invest 5 per cent (in ETFs) to start with."
During the April-June period, EPFO's monthly incremental deposit was around Rs 8,200 crore. Thus it will have around Rs 410 crore at its disposal to invest in ETFs every month.

"We are a long-term player and in long-term equity market behaves in a positive manner. They (equity) have always given a positive return (in long-term)," Jalan said.

"But risk element of equity going down is always there. That risk element is very very less because it is only 5 per cent of incremental market (deposit)... Even if we invest Rs 6,000 crore as you say that is even less than 1 per cent of our corpus (Rs 6.5 lakh crore)," he said.
SBI Mutual funds has been roped in by the EPFO to help the body for its investments in the ETFs and understand the dynamics of the stock market.
EPFO has not invested in equity markets so far. Some of the trade union members on the board of EPFO's apex decision making body Central Board Of Trustees (CBT) have been opposing the decision to park funds in volatile stock market.