The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will substantially reduce investing its incremental income in debt instruments due to a paucity of corporate bonds in the market. The government had decided that EPFO will be mandated to invest a minimum of 20 percent of its incremental corpus in debt-related instruments, against the present requirement of 35 percent.Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Gangwar had written to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in October last year to reduce minimum investment limit in debt instruments following concerns raised by EPFO’s portfolio managers that it might deviate from its investment pattern. The finance ministry gave approval to the labour and employment ministry’s proposal on February 16.
