EPFO's accounting needs transparency jab

The EPFO is larger than four of the largest mutual funds put together, yet it has opaque accounting practices with no portfolio disclosure even at year-end

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) trustees announced 8.5 per cent interest for 2020-21, well after more than 10 months had passed in the financial year. This rate, tax-free to boot, sounds too good to be true and stands in sharp contrast to the interest rate on long-term government securities (G-Secs) being at a record low during the year.
 
If newspaper reports are to be believed, this was mainly because equities bought in 2015-16 were sold at a good profit. A little digging into the EPFO’s latest available annual report for 2018-19 shows (on page 180) that more than