ECONOMYNYEXT — The cabinet will present a paper for the state to pay five billion rupees in pending Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees’ Trust Fund (ETF) to employees of state-sector plantation companies, an official said.
State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said employees of state-owned plantation companies have not paid EPF and ETF to their employees for 20 years.
“Some did not have the money to buy medicine and died. There are 2,000 court cases filed by these people. Some are still waiting,” he said, speaking at an event on Sunday April 28.
“A cabinet paper will be submitted this Monday to pay this entire amount by the government this year,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government is also working on a new management authority for the plantation sector.
“We’re also looking to build a management authority to better manage the work of plantations,” said Siyambalapitiya.
The state minister also said that the state-managed EPF will pay a 13 percent return to all its member in 2023.
The government has decided to pay the return from the earnings the fund made in 2023, he said.
It was higher than the 9.0 percent return the EPF had paid in recent years, Siyambalapitiya said.
The EPF was at the centre of a controversy a few months earlier with opposition parties and activists claiming that the fund would be negatively impacted by Sri Lanka’s domestic debt restructuring efforts.
However, the Central Bank, which oversees the fund, said the claims were exaggerated if not logically unsound.
Sri Lanka re-structured the debt of the EPF, extending maturities and initially raising the coupon the 12 percent, after the central bank busted the currency from 200 to 370 destroying its real value and pushing inflation to 70 percent.
However, over the past year, the central bank has appreciated the currency, recouping the fund some of its losses.
According the Central Bank, the inflation generating state enterprise that manages the fund, liability to members went up by 12.9 percent to 3,817.9 billion rupees in 2023, while the total value of the fund went up 11.5 percent to 3,857.4 billion rupees.
There has been hardly any inflation (as measured by the most widely watched Colombo Consumer Prince Index) since September 2022, when monetary stability was restored. (Colombo/Apr29/2024)