PFRDA Board gives nod for govt staff to choose fund manager

Board of pension fund regulator PFRDA has granted "in-principle" approval to a proposal of providing choice to government employees to select their pension fund managers.
Stating this in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said the move would bring parity with other subscribers as the subscribers under the National Pension System (NPS) for the private sector are already enjoying the choice.
Choice of pension funds would create competition amongst the pension funds to compete for the pension corpus and offer better performance or returns to the subscribers.
Further, Sinha said this would enable the subscribers in opting for pension funds based on their performance.

"The enhanced size of the market will also attract more players in the fund management space leading to greater specialisation, risk diversification, risk management and enhanced governance standards...," the minister said.
He also said giving choice of pension fund will bring economies of scale in terms of cost, wherein private sector funds can be attracted towards managing funds of government servants.
In another reply, Sinha said under the two tranche of gold bond scheme, the total subscription was Rs 991.61 crore.
To increase awareness about the scheme, government had launched multi-media multi-lingual campaign.