new delhi finance minister p chidambaram has sought to suggest that the employees provident fund organisation epfo may invest funds in high yielding instruments in order to provide better returns to its over four crore subscribers when asked whether there is a case for increasing the epf rate in view of the rising inflation he told pti that the government cannot increase the interest rates on special deposit schemes sds where the bulk of the epf funds are parked sds gets eight per cent returns you cannot touch that eight per cent because that applies to very many instruments also so it cannot be looked at in isolation he said the epfo however he added was welcome to take money and invest it elsewhere if they can get better returns we have told them epfo twothree years ago that you can withdraw sds money and invest it elsewhere he said finance ministers statement comes after some members of the central board of trustees of epfo has raised the demand for increasing interest rate on provident fund from 85 per cent to 12 per cent in view of the rising inflation epfo board had earlier rejected the proposal to invest five per cent of its funds in the stock market following opposition from trade unions the board at the recent meeting of the trustees on july 5 deferred the decision on revising the interest rates with inflation inching towards 12 per cent mark 85 per cent interest rate fetches negative real returns