Trustees of the employees provident fund, which has a corpus of about Rs 1,30,000 crore (Rs 1300 billion), has decided against investing a portion of its assets in mutual funds and stock markets.
"We do not want to take risks, as the Central Board of Trustees has clearly decided not to go for investments in share market or mutual funds," Labour Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said on the sidelines of a meeting in New Delhi.
The decision against investing money in stock markets, he said, was taken to protect workers' savings.
The statement comes amid EPFO's decision to appoint a global consultant, Mercer Human Resources, to suggest measures to improve investment patterns, including parking a portion of funds in equities, to earn higher incomes.
The decision by EPFO also comes in view of the finance ministry allowing non-state provident funds to invest upto 5.0 per cent of their assets in equities and equity-related mutual funds.
However, a majority of central trade unions, including CPI(M)- backed CITU and CPI-affiliated AITUC were against EPFO parking money in 'high risk' equities as they feared that the country's largest provident fund could go the erstwhile UTI way.
A section of the EPF board was of the view that there was a need to increase returns on its investments, especially after Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced one per cent hike in interest to 9.5 per cent for this fiscal.
With this hike, there is a shortfall of Rs 927 crore (Rs 9.27 billion) between what EPFO offers as interest to its about four crore beneficiaries and what it earns on its investments.