more-in The exposure of Employees Provident Fund to Exchange Traded Fund was likely to go up from 10% to 15% subject to the clearance by Central Board of Trustees of Employees Provident Fund Organisation in the coming days. A meeting of the CBT will be convened within a fortnight for the purpose, Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya told a press conference here on Sunday. Though the CBT had in principle agreed to the proposal at an earlier meeting, the matter will again be taken to it a second time as investments in the ETF were risky and needed meticulous portfolio management. Before increasing the investment in the ETF, Mr. Dattatreya said the Labour Ministry had decided to send a team to Germany, Japan, Australia and South Korea to study how the governments fared after investing 30% of PF in the ETF. The Ministry will also examine a proposal to slide investments between triple A plus and double A plus companies in a bid to get higher returns. Of the total corpus of the EPF to the tune of over ? 10 lakh crore, he said the Government had identified ? 1.40 lakh crore as investible amount at the rate of 10%. The return from it up to March 31 was ? 21,559 crore and the market value ? 23,845 crore. Thereby, the Government earned an interest of 10.6% which went up to 11.5% by April 21. Defending the decision of the EPFO to decrease the interest rate on PF from 8.7% last year to 8.65%, Mr. Dattatreya said it owed to steep decline in the interest rate regime in all savings accounts. Though the Finance Ministry wanted the interest pegged at 8.60%, it was persuaded to concede the recommendation of the CBT at 8.65%. He said that a meeting of Labour and Urban Development Ministries in New Delhi on Monday will firm up the subsidy component of a group insurance housing scheme for economically weaker sections, low and middle income groups. Ten lakh houses will be constructed under the scheme in the next two years.

Stay updated with all the Hyderabad Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.