EPFO To Consider Raising Retirement Age To 60 Years

There is a proposal to raise the retirement of organised sector workers to 60 years for its pension by EPFO`s apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustee (CBT). Besides,

the CBT in this meeting will also deliberate on a proposal to withdraw two years bonus under the pension scheme provided to subscribers after rendering 20 years of pensionable service.

These proposals are included in the agenda for the CBT meeting scheduledon February 5 to be chaired by Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes.

At present, under the Employees` Pension Scheme(EPS-95), the subscribers of Employees` Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) cease to be a member of the pension scheme and can apply for fixation of his/her pension. Thus, he cannot contribute to the scheme after the age of 58 years.

The Finance Ministry in its memorandum to Labour Ministry has proposed these amendments in the EPS-95 after giving its concurrence for providing a minimum entitlement of Rs 1,000 minimum monthly pension under the scheme.

The Finance Ministry is of the view that raising the retirement age for this purpose will help subscribers accumulate a bigger corpus while delaying thepay-out by two years.