NEW DELHI: The pension regulator has urged for more tax parity between the National Pension System (NPS) and other pension schemes.
“This tax exemption of up to 40% of the retirement corpus is a very big step that the government has taken and which brings us closer to EPF (employee provident fund) and other pension products,” Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Chairman Hemant Contractor said. “So, it is a welcome move … Hopefully … we should see some parity between the other pension schemes.” FM Arun Jaitley in the 2016-17 budget announced that withdrawal of up to 40% of the corpus at the time of retirement will be made tax exempt in the case of NPS.
Contractor said under the NPS scheme, there has been higher growth from the voluntary or nongovernment sector. At present, the total subscriber base under NPS is 1.18 crore and the fund under management is Rs 1.15 lakh crore.
Contractor said the launch of the eNPS online platform to open new accounts and make contributions to the existing accounts has helped in boosting subscriber additions. “The traction is good now, we are getting about 600-700 accounts opening per day through eNPS. As far as the Atal Pension Yojana is concerned, about 22.5 lakh accounts have been opened.
The growth has been good, and we are getting 8,000-10,000 accounts opening under the Atal Pension Yojana per day,” he added.
The regulator is also looking to set up a committed workforce for the implementation of the government’s NPS. The regulator is looking to hire training institutes to cover 600 district headquarters and train 75,000 people who would become the driving force for the NPS implementation.
