With an aim to enhance the capital inflow in domestic equity markets, Finance Ministry has proposed allowing retirement and gratuity funds to invest up to 30 percent of their money in the equity market.
As per the Finance Ministry proposal, non-government pension, provident and gratuity funds can invest up to 15 percent in shares of companies that have derivatives or in mutual funds. Further, these funds can also invested up to 15 percent of their amount in exchange traded funds, index funds that replicate the portfolios of the Sensex or Nifty, or derivatives including credit default swaps. The draft proposal notified that index funds replicating Sensex or Nifty portfolios should be constructed in such a manner that investment in securities may be in the same weightage comprising an index. It added that the fund managers will have to choose which index they intend to track in advance on a yearly basis. The Retirement and gratuity funds will be permitted to invest up to 40 percent debt securities with a maturity period of three years. Finance Ministry proposes to make these investment guidelines effective from April 1, 2015.
According to the current norms, funds are not permitted to take any direct equity exposure. However, such funds can invest up to 55 percent of the total money in debt instruments such as government bonds. Retirement fund body EPFO is allowed to invest up to 5 percent in money market instruments, including equity linked schemes of mutual funds regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
However, trade unions have decided to oppose any move to invest part of over Rs 5 lakh crore corpus of retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in equity market. The unions are of the view that poor worker money should not be exposed to equity markets. Most of the trade unions in the country are in favour of setting up a workers' bank using EPFO funds to meet the credit requirements of the working class and earn better returns on investments.
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