The Indian Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said on Wednesday that an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) can enroll under the National Pension Scheme (NPS).
With this, OCIs – people of Indian origin holding citizenship of other countries – will be at par with NRIs as far as eligibility for applying for NPS is concerned, the Finance Ministry said on Wednesday.
"The government on October 17 issued a notification on Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) Rules 2019 of the Department of Economic Affairs which specifies 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 FEMA guidelines," said a ministry statement.
Contributions made towards the government-run pension and investment scheme are eligible for an additional tax deduction up to INR 50,000 which is over and above the INR 1.5 lakh limit of deduction available under sec 80CCD(1).
In the Union Budget 2019, tax exemption limit for lump sum withdrawal on exit or maturity from the NPS was increased from 40 to 60 per cent under section 10(12A) of the Income Tax Act. The remaining 40 per cent of corpus is already tax-exempt as it is mandatorily utilised for annuity purchase.
The total number of subscribers under NPS and Atal Pension Yojana has crossed 3.18 crore and assets under management (AUM) total is over INR 3.79 trillion. More than 66 lakh 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.