Central Board of Trustees of EPFO to meet on November 23 

The Central Board of Trustees of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is set to meet on November 23. The meeting of the CBT, which is the apex decision making body of the retirement fund manager, is set to have a heavy agenda including a discussion on the audited accounts, implementation of higher pension as well as approval of the centralised pension payment system. 

While the agenda is yet to be circulated, sources indicated that these are some of the top issues to be taken up along with a review of the investments by the EPFO this fiscal and the progress on IT modernisation. 

The EPFO has recently completed a pilot run of its Centralised Pension Payments System (CPPS) under Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 under which pensioners can receive their pension from any bank, any branch, anywhere in the country. 

The new CPPS system, which is seen as a significant modernisation in the EPFO, is expected to be  fully rolled out as part of EPFO’s ongoing IT modernisation project Centralised IT Enabled System by January 2025. It is expected to benefit more than 78 lakh EPS pensioners of EPFO.  

Significantly, this will be the first meeting of the EPFO’s CBT under the new government at the Centre. Union Labour and Employment Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is the Chairman of the CBT, which consists of representatives from employers and employee unions as well as Central and state labour officials. 

As a pre cursor to the CBT meeting, the Executive Committee of the Central Board of the EPFO had met on November 8. At the meeting, the Audited Annual Accounts of EPFO for the years 2021-22 and 2022-23 were placed before the Committee for consideration of recommendation to the Board, thus ensuring that the backlog of annual account was cleared. “The Committee gave directions that the audited accounts for the year 2023-24 should be prepared and presented in time,” an official release had said.