Pension Fund Regulatory Authority (PFRDA) has announced that the Non Resident Indians can start a Pension
account with the participating banks of the scheme. Mr.Hemant
Contractor, Chairman, PFRDA said today. Contractor said that NRIs could
now invest in NPS and that the Reserve Bank of India had also recently
clarified that NPS, like mutual funds and insurance, was also an
eligible investment for NRIs.
“There was some ambiguity about whether to add NPS as eligible investment by NRI. So, we took up the matter with RBI and very recently they have given this clarification that NPS like insurance and mutual fund could also be eligible investment
for NRIs,” said Hemant Contractor, chairman of the Pension Fund
Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), adding that the government
will shortly be coming out with clarification to that effect in the FEMA guidelines
However,
it was made it clear that there were no plans to allow Persons of
Indian Origin (PIOs) or those with Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI)
card to invest in NPS.
At present there are about 10 million Indians mostly from Kerala, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and other States are working abroad. PFRDAs this new initiative would bring more beneficial to the NRIs and they can save for their Retirement in India.
Around Rs.91000 crores is being maintained in the Indian Pension Corpus fund with the empanelled Annuity Service Providers.
PFRDA has released a presentation on the salient features of the NPS for NRIs, eligibility details, schemes available, leading Empanelled Annuity Service Providers, Procedure for withdrawal, Tax benefit and implications etc.