Steady growth in Provident Fund

Investment portfolio tops Rs 738.1 billion:

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) has grown steadily over the past several years.

The growth is attributed to the increase in contributions and distribution of income to members.

Over 97 percent of the EPF portfolio is invested in Government Securities. The EPF investment portfolio as at end 2009 stood at Rs 738.1 billion recording a 17.6 percent growth since end 2008.

Over the years EPF has managed to maintain its operational expenditure below one percent of the gross income of the fund.

The total amount of refunds to members and their heirs in 2009 was Rs 31.9 billion, which is an increase of 23.2 percent. It was Rs 25.9 billion in 2008.

Central Bank Employees’ Provident Fund Department Superintendent M.J. S. Abeysinghe, said the number of refund applications processed increased by 5.4 percent to 108,066 applications during 2009.

The net contributions stood at Rs 16.3 billion during the year compared with that of Rs 20 billion in 2008.

EPF will be converted to a member centric modern banking model by assigning unique identification number for member accounts.

The member contribution will be through direct debits and the commercial banks will be empowered to accept EPF contributions by employers on electronic format.

This would enable on-line transmission of funds and member information. There will also be a process to authorize on-line refunds by the Labour Commissioner to members.

With the improvement of the system members can access information such as their account balance, current contribution details, status of refund application and housing loan application through internet and SMS.

A re-registration program, a joint project of the EPF Department and Labour Department to re-register members and assign unique member numbers will be carried out shortly.

This move will enable it to move fully to IT based member accounts and fund management system.

Over 70 percent of work related to C category to assign unique member numbers was completed last year and assigning for C 3 category is currently underway.

Thumb impressions are collected in the digital form as an advanced safety measure of record keeping.