Last year Central Board of EPF decided to raise the interest rates to 8.65% from 8.55% for the year 2018-19. And today Finance ministry has approved of the decision to increase the rates as EPFO has investing it’s corpus like in non-traditional instruments like Equities etc.,
After Finance Ministry approval, Income Tax department followed by Labour Ministry would notify the interest rates. Once both department notify the raise in interest rates, EPFO will direct all it’s 120 field offices to apply the interest rate accordingly