EPFO Board will meet on November 23 to approve Central Pension Payment System

The central board of trustees of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will hold its first meeting of the current financial year on November 23 to give its go ahead to the central pension payment system approved by the government, before it is rolled out on January 1, people in the know told ET.

“The central board of trustees (CBT) is also expected to approve the account statement and the Annual Report 2023-24 of the EPFO,” one of the people said.

The EPFO has not circulated the agenda of the meeting to its board members till press time Wednesday. The board of trustees is the highest decision-making body of the EPFO and is chaired by the labour minister.

The last meeting of the CBT was held in February in which the board approved the employee provident fund interest rate at 8.25% for 2023-24 for over 70 million subscribers.

The EPFO is also expected to apprise the board of the development on the software update or EPFO 2.0, which has enhanced the speed of the unified EPFO portal by 30% and is expected to improve further with the ongoing hardware upgrade, the people said.

The Ministry of Labour and Employment, along with the EPFO, has taken systemic reforms at the retirement fund body as one of its priorities in the first 100 days of the new government to ensure seamless transactions.Labour and employment minister Mansukh Mandaviya last month approved the centralised pension payment system (CPPS) under the Employees’ Pension Scheme, 1995, to enable 7.8 million EPS subscribers to withdraw pension from any bank and any branch across India. Besides, it will also ensure disbursement of pension throughout India without any need for transfer of pension payment orders (PPOs) from one office to another, even when the pensioner moves from one location to another or changes his bank or branch.