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Journalism of Courage
The retirement fund body EPFO is likely to miss the June 30 deadline for appointment of fund managers to manage its huge corpus of over Rs 3.5 lakh crore and ask for more time for the purpose.
“EPFO may not be able to appoint multiple fund managers for managing its funds by June 30 as desired by the apex decision making body Central Board of Trustees (CBT),” a Labour Ministry sources said.
Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has asked the 10 asset management companies (AMCs),who had evinced interest in managing its funds,to submit the financial bids by June 24.
Once the bids are submitted,the credit rating agency CRISIL engaged by the EPFO for appointment of fund managers,would take not less than 10 days to evaluate the proposals and shortlist the AMCs.
The sources said,”Since the meeting of CBT is scheduled on June 24,it would not be possible to take a call on the matter by the trustee on that day”.
“Therefore,EPFO officials would ask for more time for placing the shortlisted AMCs on the basis of financial bids in CBT meet scheduled on June 24,” the source added.
EPFO has already missed a deadline of March 31 this year,the day on which the term of four fund managers including ICICI Pru,HSBC,Reliance Capital and SBI expired. It had planned to appoint new fund managers for next three financial years beginning April 1.
Since EPFO could not appoint new AMCs well in time,the CBT in its meeting on March 30,decided that SBI would manage its entire corpus for a three month period ending June 30 as an interim arrangement.
Besides four AMCs who had managed EPFO corpus,seven new firms,including Kotak Securities,Securities Trading Corporation of India,UTI Securities and ICICI Securities have expressed interest in managing the retirement fund.
EPFO had appointed the multiple fund managers for the first time in July 2008 and prior to that SBI was the sole fund manager for it since its inception in 1952.
