Concerned over its exposure in IL&FS bonds, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) wrote to the Finance Ministry over protecting the retirement fund money of its subscribers. 

"Letters have been written to the Finance Minister and also to Corporate Affairs," Central Provident Fund Commissioner Sunil Barthwal told IANS. However, Barthwal made it clear that the EPFO's exposure in the debt-ridden company's bonds is "very less" considering its total corpus. 

"Till now there has been no default by IL&FS in paying our interest amount or any principal amount. Now we will have to see, what happens when our interest becomes due. That we are watching," Barthwal said without divulging the amount of investment in the bonds. 

Meanwhile, EPFO on Thursday hiked interest rate from 8.55 per cent to 8.65 per cent for fiscal 2018-19. More than six crore subscribers will benefit from the move.

The decision was taken in the 224th meeting of the Central Board of Trustees. 

According to the latest EPFO payroll data, employment generation in the formal sector almost trebled to touch a 16-month high of 7.16 lakh in December 2018 compared to 2.37 lakh in the year-ago month. 

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Around 72.32 lakh new subscribers were added to social security schemes of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) from September 2017 to December 2018, the data showed. This indicates that these many jobs were created in the last 16 months.

The EPFO, however, revised downwards its payroll data for November 2018 by 23.44% to 5.80 lakh against the earlier estimate of 7.16 lakh released last month. It also revised the cumulative job addition data from September 2017 to November 2018 downwards 11.36% to 65.15 lakh from the earlier forecast of 73.50 lakh. The sharpest revision was for March 2018 in the latest report which showed net addition of 5,498 subscribers against 55,831 subscribers in the last month’s estimate. 

The EPFO data statement explained that the March 2018 figure is low due to a large number of exits reported in the month of March, in view of it being the closing month of the financial year.