The Employees Provident Fund (EPFO) board is meeting tomorrow to find ways to cover the estimated gap of Rs 927 crore due to hiked interest rates announced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram for the current fiscal year.The chairman of the central board of trustees (CBT) of EPFO, K Chandrasekhar Rao, after meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singhon the issue, had made it clear that if it was not able to meet the shortfall, the finance ministry would have to chip in with necessary resources.The CBT, which manages about Rs 1,28,000 crore corpus of workers' savings, had met on Feburary 21 but could not take up the issue, tactically putting the blame on elections in certain states.The meeting also comes in the wake of an internal committee of EPFO recommending that only 8% interest rate will be sustainable in 2005-06, which the trade unions objected to as they want continuation of 9.5% rate. However, the finance and investment sub-committee viewed that by offering 9.5%, the expected shortfall could swell to Rs 1,200 crore."The only way to make EPFO sustainable is to increase the interest on SDS," CITU secretary and a member of EPF board, W R Wardharajan said.
