Atal Pension Yojana: What PFRDA will undertake for the exponential growth of APY

Atal Pension Yojana: Pension regulator Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has said that it will undertake proactive initiatives for achieving exponential growth of Atal Pension Yojana (APY). Speaking on the five years of completion of the APY Scheme, PFRDA Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay said that the statutory pension regulatory authority has a humongous task of increasing the pension coverage as only five per cent of the eligible population has been covered under APY till date.

While speaking on the completion of five years of APY scheme Supratim Bandyopadhyay, Chairman, PFRDA said, "This feat of bringing in the most vulnerable sections of the society under the coverage of pension was possible only with the untiring efforts of Public & Private Banks, Regional Rural Banks, Payments Banks, Small Finance Banks, Department of Posts and the support extended by the State Level Bankers’ Committees." However, he added, "Going forward we have a humongous task of increasing the pension coverage as only five per cent of the eligible population has been covered under APY till date and recognising the social importance of this scheme, we continuously undertake proactive initiatives for achieving exponential growth and addressing unexpected scenarios as an when they arise."

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APY

As per the information given by the  PFRDA, APY can be subscribed by any Indian citizen in the age group of 18-40 years having a bank account and its uniqueness is attributable to three distinctive benefits. First, it provides a minimum guaranteed pension ranging from Rs 1000 to Rs 5000 on attaining 60 years of age, Secondly the amount of pension is guaranteed for lifetime to spouse on death of the subscriber and lastly, in the event of death of both the subscriber and the spouse, entire pension corpus is paid to the nominee.

5 years journey of APY

The journey of APY over these five years has been phenomenal and as on 9th May 2020, the total enrollment under the scheme stood at 2,23,54,028 or 2.23 crore.  During the first two years of its launch, almost 50 lakh subscribers were enrolled, which doubled to 100 lakh in the third year and the milestone of 1.50 crore was achieved in the 4th year. In the last financial year, almost 70 lakh subscribers were enrolled under the scheme.