New Delhi, October 30: The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has now permitted Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) to enroll in National Pension Scheme (NPS) at par with Non-Resident Indians (NRI), Ministry of Finance informed on Wednesday.
The government on October 17, 2019 in a notification on Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) Rules, 2019 of Department of Economic Affairs, has specified that an OCI may subscribe to the NPS governed and administered by PFRDA, provided such person is eligible to invest as per the provisions of the PFRDA Act and the annuity/accumulated saving will be repatriable, subject to Foreign Exchange Management Act guidelines.
The ministry statement said contributions made towards NPS are eligible for an additional tax deduction under section 80CCD(1B) upto Rs 50,000, which is over and above the Rs 1,50,000 limit of deduction available under sec 80CCD(1).
In the Union Budget 2019, the tax exemption limit for lumpsum withdrawal on exit/maturity from NPS has been increased from the present 40 per cent to 60 per cent under section 10(12A) of the I-T Act and the remaining 40 per cent of the corpus is already tax-exempt as it is mandatorily utilised for annuity purchase.
The PFRDA is the statutory authority established by an enactment of the Parliament, to regulate, promote and ensure orderly growth of the NPS and pension schemes to which this Act applies.
As on October 26, 2019, the total number of subscribers under NPS and Atal Pension Yojana has crossed 3.18 crore and the asset under management has grown to Rs 3,79,758 crore. More than 66 lakhs government employees have been enrolled under NPS and 19.2 lakh subscribers have subscribed to NPS in the private sector with 6,812 entities registered as corporates.
Now, any Indian citizen, resident or non-resident and OCIs are eligible to join NPS till the age of 65 years.