The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), which regulates the National Pension Scheme (NPS) is planning to allow its subscribers to partially withdraw their money before maturity, said a senior official.
Currently, under the National Pension scheme the subscribers can exit at the age of 60. “At the moment, we are not allowing any withdrawal. But there is a request to look at withdrawal in cases such as emergency medical condition and we are looking at that,” said Yogesh Agarwal, chairman, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
The NPS has a total corpus of 52.57 lakh subscribers with a total corpus of Rs 35,000 crore.
On the passage of the pension bill, Agarwal said, he expects that since the two major parties are on the same page because whatever the parliamentary standing committee had suggested those changes have been incorporated into the bill. “So now, I don’t think there is any contentious issue as the finance minister is also saying,” said Agarwal.
On the recent tussle between the finance ministry and the labour ministry on the proposal to shift the subscribers of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to New Pension system, Agarwal said the issue will be resolved soon. “This is an inter-ministerial issue, if you see the merits of it the two schemes are entirely different. Because the EPFO operates an assured return kind of scheme whereas in the NPS we don’t assure any return but we are able to give much better return than an EPFO does. While the NPS is managed by finance ministry, the EPFO is managed by the labour ministry I don’t think we should leave it to them to sort it,” Agarwal said.