Provident fund withdrawal claims have soared to 1.01 crore (10.1 million) in 2008-09, but the spurt is not entirely becaues of job losses on account of recession which marked the just concluded fiscal.
"(The) Employees Provident Fund Organisation has received about 1.01 crore applications, which include cases of superannuation, withdrawal, transfer and pension amounts, for claims settlement against 76.35 lakh the last fiscal," said an EPFO official said.
The spurt in settlement of PF claims cannot be entirely attributed to job losses on account of recession, sources said, adding, "It could be one of the reasons. After all we received 76.53 lakh (7.65 million) claim settlement applications in 2007-08 when there was no recession."
A member of the Central Board of Trustees D L Sachdev said, "It is quite possible that people might have resorted to withdrawing money from their provident fund accounts. But increase in the number of such applications cannot be solely attributed to job losses due to recession".
EPFO maintains accounts of about 4.49 crore (44.9 million) depositors with a corpus of more 1.82 lakh crore (1.82 trillion) and an incremental deposit of around Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) every year.
The Central Board of Trustees is the decision making body of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation. It has representations form employees, employers and the government.
During 2006-07, EPFO received 69.48 lakh (6.94 million) claim settlement applications, which included 32.25 lakh (3.22 million) for final claim settlement (superannuation or others), 4,61,000 for partial or advance withdrawal for childern's marriage or their higher education.
There were 5,24,000-claim settlement applications which were transfer cases in 2006-07. Under transfer cases, the savings of a depositor maintained by one employer with EPFO is transfered to another employer's account.
