At present, for the benefit of the employee, the employer’s provident fund contribution up to 12% of the salary (Basic + DA) is deducted, subject to a limit of Rs 7.5 lakh, and the interest on this contribution is tax-free. However, under the National Pension Scheme, employer’s contribution to NPS is exempt only up to 10% of salary (Basic + DA).
Deepak Mohanty, chairman of EPFO, said, “We have requested to increase it to 12% to align it with EPFO. Our target is to take it to 14% because, in case of government employees, contribution up to 14% is tax-free. Is.” PFRDA,
Mohanty was in Mumbai to meet distributors and other stakeholders in NPS to expand the customer base. He also announced that the corpus under NPS has crossed Rs 11 lakh crore.
He noted that NPS has outperformed all equity benchmarks, with the equity fund returning 24.2% in one year, 18.4% in three years and 13.3% since inception. The central government scheme, a mix of debt and a small equity portion, has yielded 9.46% since inception.
Despite the scheme’s performance and ease of investment, awareness about it and the flexibility provided through systematic withdrawals is low. In the private sector, the total customer base is only 51 lakh, with assets under management worth a little over Rs 2 lakh crore as of December 23.
Mohanty said, “We have targeted to attract 13 lakh customers during the current financial year. We have added about 5.3 lakh customers so far and are focusing on increasing awareness through campaigns, distributors and social media. “
