The Central Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund is likely to meet shortly to review the interest rates on EPF for the current financial year.

The meeting of the CBT would take place shortly during which the board's finance and investment sub-committee would unveil its recommendations on the interest rates to be offered on the EPF, ministry sources said.

Evading the finance ministry's pressure for a cut in EPF rate from the present 9.5 per cent in the light of falling interest rate, Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma, who is the chairman of CBT, has been saying he was not in favour of any cut and the sub-committee would decide on it.

"I do not want to reduce it (EPF interest) by even 0.1 per cent," Verma had said after the previous CBT meeting.

The pension fund committee, according to reports, had recommended the rate be cut to 8.0 per cent from 9.5 per cent.

"How can they decide on interest rate when they have not met till now? The committee will meet for the first time on April 23," Labour Minister Sahib Singh told reporters.

The trustees meet at the beginning of every financial year to decide on the interest rate payable on the fund. Last year, they refused a finance ministry recommendation to cut rates in line with a softer rate regime in the country.

According to sources, the sub-committee, which is in the process of giving final touches to the recommendations, had been given one month to come out with suggestions in the 160^th CBT meeting held late last month.

It is understood that the sub-committee had weighed all options, especially in the wake of one per cent cut in interest rate of special deposit schemes, which comprise over 80 per cent of the Rs 1,40,000 crore (Rs 1,400 billion) EPF corpus.

Finance ministry sources said the present 9.5 per cent was not sustainable due to lack of interest rates on savings instruments, especially after the centre aligned the interest rates in the economy to the yields from government securities.

Additional inputs: Reuters