The government has kept the rate of interest on savings made under the General Provident Fund (GPF) unchanged at 7.1 percent, CNBC TV-18 reported on January 3.
The rate will remain applicable for at least the quarterly period ending on March 31, 2023.
The General Provident Fund is a social security scheme available to central government employees. An interest at the rate of 7.1 percent will also continue for other government-run provident funds, including State Railway Provident Fund, Contributory Provident Fund, Armed Forces Personnel Provident Fund and All India Services Provident Fund.
On December 30, the finance ministry had announced a hike - ranging from 20 to 110 basis points - in the interest rates on some small savings schemes for the January-March quarter.
The financial instruments whose rates were raised included the Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS), Monthly Income Scheme (MIS), National Savings Certificate (NSC) and Kisan Vikas Patra.
However, the rates for instruments such as Public Provident Fund (PPF) and Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY) were left unchanged for the January-March quarter. PPF will continue to fetch a return of 7.1 percent, whereas, the interest rate for SSY schemes will continue to be 7.6 percent.
Notably, the repo rate or the short-term lending rate has been sharply increased by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over the past few months, in a bid to tame inflation. Since April, the key policy rate has been raised by 225 basis points by the central bank.