The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is expected to retain the interest rate for its six crore account holders at 8.5 per cent in 2010-11, with a formal announcement likely to be made in August. "I hope that the recommendation of 8.5 per cent by the Finance and Investment Committee of the EPFO will be retained," Central Provident Fund Commissioner S Chatterjee told Press. "The EPF rate will hopefully be finalised in the next EPF Board meeting, which is expected in August," he said.

Asked if there was any shortfall in return from the current payout of 8.5 per cent, Chatterjee said there was no deficit. Asked how the EPFO was maintaining a decent return, Chatterjee said, "As we do not trade with investments, the yield to maturity from securities bought at par in the past are mitigating the impact of low returns from current investments.

" Currently, the EPF has one-third of its total Rs 3,00,000 crore corpus in a special deposit of the government, which yields only 8 per cent interest.