A four-year-old decision which barred inactive EPF accounts from earning interest will be evaluated by the government today. Those accounts where there have been no contributions either by an employee or their employer for 36 months are termed as “inactive EPF”.

The Central Board of Trustees (CBT) will meet today to evaluate its 2012 order. CBT is a tripartite body including representatives from the government, industry and workers. Labor minister Bandaru Dattatreya is the chairperson of the board.

Out of the total 150 million, there are around 40 million accounts that are lying inactive with 27,000 crores in it.

To prevent workers from making their accounts inactive and encourage to merge them with an active one, the decision to stop the payment of interest to such accounts was taken in 2012.

Employees can now earn Interest on Inactive EPF Accounts

The new rules notified on February 10 authorized that one can withdraw only his or her own total share of EPF deposits, along with the interest earned on that amount. It bars an employee from obtaining their PF amount contributed by Employer till they turn 58. It was not the case earlier, where an Employee could withdraw his entire PF amount after two months of leaving a job.

As per an EPFO statement, the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) will also discuss issues relating to Employees’ Deposit-Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme and a few debt market investment rules for better use of EPF money. A CBT member also said that they shall ask for a review of the ETF investments during the meeting.

EPFO has 40 million active subscribers and, it manages a whole of Rs.8.5 trillion.