Pension fund regulator PFRDA today said it has released Rs 106 crore as government’s co-contribution under the Atal Pension Yojana. The government has already released the first tranche of Rs 100 crore as its co-contribution and now the second tranche of Rs 5.89 crore for the year gone-by has been released to 92,403 subscribers in November, a PFRDA statement said.
However, the subscribers who have pending contributions till March 2016 won’t be paid with co-contribution and hence they have been advised to regularize APY account, PFRDA said.
Atal Pension Yojana is being implemented through the APY Service Providers comprising state-owned and private sector lenders, regional rural banks, cooperative banks and post offices, both in urban and rural areas across the country.
According to PFRDA, a total number of subscribers registered under APY as of November 28 has crossed 37.3 lakh and on average everyday, 5,000 new subscribers are being added.
Earlier, PFRDA chairman Hemant Contractor had told PTI that regulator was expecting that total APY accounts would cross 50 lakh mark by the fiscal-end.
The scheme provides for a co-contribution from the government for those who have registered before March 31 with an amount equal to 50 percent of the subscribers’ contribution up to a maximum of Rs 1,000. These subscribers will be eligible for co-contribution for 5 years, from 2015-16 to 2019-20.
Only those subscribers who are not income tax payers and not part of any other social security schemes are eligible for government co-contribution under the scheme.
The subscribers who have any pending contributions in their APY account till March 2016 won’t be paid with co-contribution. They have been advised by PFRDA to regularize their APY account so as to get government co-contribution in coming months, it said.
Government co-contribution is payable only when accounts are regular. The admissible government co-contribution is paid into the savings bank account of the subscribers.
Atal Pension Yojana provides a minimum pension of Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 per month from the age of 60 years.
The same amount of pension is paid to the spouse in case of subscriber’s demise. After the demise of both subscriber and spouse, the nominee would be paid the pension corpus.
The government is guaranteeing returns under the scheme at 8 percent, however, the scheme has generated a weighted average CAGR of 12.60 percent, the release said.
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