The Parliamentary standing committee on labour has questioned the rationale behind inevesting in equity market by EPFO. Why the retirement fund body continued to invest in equity market, even when the market was falling in March-April. “Who took the call in this regard? Who was responsible for the decision? Give the details to us in writing,” Committee Chairman Bhartruhari Mahtab told the EPFO top brass and the labour ministry officials in a meeting on Wednesday. With a return of (-)8.29% on its Rs. 1.03-lakh crore investment in exchange traded funds (ETFs) till March 31, 2020, the EPFO’s expectations to benefit from equity market exposure are belied. The EPFO has been investing in ETFs since August 2015. Initially, the body started investing 5% of its investible corpus in stock markets. The proportion was raised to 10% in 2016-17 and 15% in 2017-18.

Courtesyg: Google (photo)