The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), which regulates the National Pension Scheme, is planning to allow its subscribers to partially withdraw their money before maturity, said a senior official.
Currently, subscribers to NPS can exit at the age of 60. At present, “We are not allowing any withdrawal. But there are requests to look at withdrawals in cases, such as emergency medical condition, and we are looking at that,” said Yogesh Agarwal, Chairman, PFRDA. The NPS has 52.57 lakh subscribers with a total corpus of Rs 35,000 crore. The scheme has given returns of 12-14 per cent over the last one year.
On passage of the Pension Bill, Agarwal saidthe two major parties seem to be on the same page because whatever the parliamentary standing committee had suggested have been incorporated in the Bill. “So now, I don’t think there is any contentious issue,” said Agarwal.
On the recent tussle between the Finance and the Labour Ministries on the proposal by the former to shift the subscribers of Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to NPS, 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, I don’t assure any return but we are able to give much better return than EPFO does. While the NPS is managed by the Finance Ministry, the EPFO is managed by the Labour Ministry. I think we should leave it to them to sort it,” Agarwal said.