new delhi retirement fund body epfo will once again consider diversifying its investment pattern to park 515 of its corpus in equity and infrastructure trusts reviving the proposal amid fears that it could face an exodus to better managed national pension scheme after the budget announced a choice to subscribers with respect to the employees provident fund epf the employee needs to be provided two options firstly the employee may opt for epf or the new pension scheme nps finance minister arun jaitley said in his budget speech last saturday as per the budget proposal for employees below a certain threshold of monthly income contribution to epf should be optional dealing another blow to the organisation that manages over rs 5 lakh crore of retirement contribution of workers epfo largely invests in safe government securities which fetch about 85 returns in contrast nps provides an option of investing up to 50 in equities and consequently can give higher returns over time at the upcoming meet of its central board of trustees on march 11 epfo is likely to take up the issue of diversifying its investments afresh as it discusses the budget proposals and their implications the idea of investing more of retirement savings in equities had in the past met with stiff opposition from the trade unions which insist that the government should provide a guarantee in case it wants to put money from the epfo corpus in equity or infrastructure the investment pattern of epfo is decided by the central board of trustees which is headed by labour minister and the finance ministrys notification is not binding on it until now the agenda for the next weeks meeting has not been revised but in case there is a formal communication from finance ministry on this we would like to take it up with the trustees for reconsideration a senior epfo official told et however the proposal is not likely to be accepted this time either as key trade unions continue to have reservations on it even as the employers association is open to the idea of revising the existing investment pattern we dont want to invest any money in equity and there is no change from our earlier stand no matter how much the government pushes for it said ak padmanabhan president of the centre of indian trade unions ad nagpal of hind mazdoor sabha concurred saying epf is an income fund and the department does not have the expertise to invest in equity which is extremely volatile both citu and hms are part of the central board of trustees under the investment pattern that is set to be notified soon the finance ministry will allow nongovernment provident funds superannuation funds and gratuity funds to invest in infrastructure trusts besides enabling them to park 515 of their investible funds in equity and equityrelated instruments the other key changes under the new investment pattern include providing minimum and maximum limit ranging from 4550 for central government securities against 55