EPFO to appoint fund managers by Aug 31

The EPFOs quest to appoint fund managers for its Rs 3.5 lakh crore corpus will take some more time due to the lack of crucial clearances.

The EPFOs quest to appoint fund managers for its Rs 3.5 lakh crore corpus will take some more time due to the lack of crucial clearances. The process is now likely to be completed by August 31 as against the earlier deadline of June 30.

The retirement fund agency has now called a meeting of its apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustees on June 24 to seek an extension for finalising the appointments. In the time being,State Bank of India will continue to be its sole fund manager.

It is proposed that the time line for selection of fund managers be extended by another two months to August 31,2011 or till the selection whichever is earlier, as per the EPFO proposal listed in the agenda of the CBT meeting.

Incidentally,this is the third such extension that the Employees Provident Fund Organisation is seeking for appointing fund managers. 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 AMC,Reliance Capital and SBI expired. It had planned to appoint new fund managers for next three financial years beginning April 1.