EPFO retains employees' provident fund interest rate at 8.25% for 2025-26

This is the second year in a row that the EPF interest rate has been kept unchanged at 8.25%

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) Central Board of Trustees (CBT) on Monday recommended retaining the annual return on EPF savings unchanged at 8.25 per cent for 2025-26 (FY26). This is the third year in a row the EPF rate is at the same level. 

The decision taken by the board, chaired by Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, will now be sent to the Ministry of Finance for final approval. Once approved, the  interest rate will be credited to over 70 million active EPF members. 

In its meeting, the CBT also cleared a one-time amnesty scheme to regularise PF trusts recognised by the Income Tax Act, that are not yet covered under the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. These trusts have been given a six-month compliance window with waiver of damages and penalties for eligible establishments. 

The retirement fund manager also approved a pilot project for auto-initiation of claim settlement in inoperative EPFO accounts with unclaimed balances of ₹1,000 or less. In the first phase, around 133,000 such accounts, amounting to nearly ₹5.68 crore, will be covered under this initiative. 

The Board also cleared standard operating procedure (SOP) formalise a time-bound response for corporate actions such as buybacks, and for equity exchange-traded funds and liquid mutual fund investments to streamline fund management. It also okayed a  simplified, tech-enabled SOP on EPF exemption, merging four SOPs and the exemption manual into a single digital framework to ease compliance, enable paperless processing and streamline audits and exemption cases.