BS Number Wise: An emerging trend in EPFO's debt investments

Every investment category but one has seen a drop in its share: it's a move that is not without some risk

India’s Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is changing its investment mix, prioritising state debt as it manages social security accounts of 258.8 million members.
 

EPFO’s share of state development loans (SDLs) — used to bridge the gap between a state government’s spending and income — has gone up by 16.03 percentage points since 2016-17. The share of such loans in the total debt corpus, based on face value, was 26.39 per cent in 2016-17. It has inc­reased to 42.42 per cent, accor­ding to the latest available data, for 2020-21.
 

Investments in every other major category have dropped. EPFO’s share of