The Central Government and Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSUs) made new appointments in January for the second consecutive month. With this, appointments have reached the highest level in 11 months. This information has come from the data of the New Pension Scheme Scheme (NPS) released on Friday by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
The number of central employees who became new members in NPS in December 2022 was 9,705. This number increased by 27.2 percent to 12,349 in January 2023. Last year in February 2022, the number of new members of NPS was 13,112.
In fact, the Center has made NPS mandatory for all new government jobs. However, analysts believe that the monthly membership figures related to new employment in the central government and CPSU may be a proxy.
The number of newly inducted members of the central government and the CPSU stood at 12,349 in January. In this, the number of youth members (18 to 28 years) increased by about 70 percent, while it had increased by 63.4 percent in the previous month. While the number of female new members increased by 5 percentage points to 30.9 percent, the number of youth new members decreased from 74.0 percent to 69.4 percent during the same period.
However, Mukesh Anand, assistant professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, said the increase in the number of new members was not solely due to new appointments from the central government and public sector undertakings. He said, “Usually at the end of the financial year, most of the employees want to avail tax concessions and benefits in Tier 2 of NPS. This is an alternate account. Therefore, due to such members also there can be a sudden increase. NPS is attractive for such members to avail the benefits.
The number of new members in the NPS has seen a rise even in the wake of a massive decline in Employees’ Provident Fund (EPFO) deposits in January. The number of members in EPF was 8,40,372 in December, 2022, it fell to a 20-month low (7,77,232) in January.
