By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Under the Atal Pension Yojana (APY), a guaranteed pension scheme of Government of India and administered by PFRDA, more than 28 lakh new APY accounts have been opened during current FY 2021-22. Overall, enrolments under APY has crossed 3.30 crore as on 25th August 2021.
Out of the total enrolments under APY as on 25th August 2021, nearly 78% subscribers have opted for Rs 1,000 pension plan while around 14% for Rs 5,000 pension plan. Further, around 44% are female subscribers and also around 44% subscribers getting enrolled are very young and belong to the age-group of 18-25 years.
In the recent past, PFRDA has undertaken new initiatives like addition of new features in the APY mobile App and its availability on Umang platform, updation of APY FAQs, issuance of APY Subscriber Information Brochure and APY Citizen Charter in 13 regional languages for expanding the outreach of the APY Scheme and for the benefit of existing and potential APY subscribers as well as APY service providers.
Encouraged by the increasing number of enrolments under the Scheme since its inception, PFRDA will continue its endeavour to popularize the scheme through organization of various APY Campaigns at national and State level, coordination with State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBCs) and National Rural Livelihood Mission ( NRLM), advertisements through print, socail & electronic media etc. in the FY 2021-22 to take total enrolments under APY to greater heights and contribute towards making India a pensioned society.
The APY allows any Citizen of India between the age group of 18-40 years to join through the bank or post office branches where one has the savings bank account. Under the scheme, a subscriber would receive a minimum guaranteed pension of Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 5,000 per month, depending upon his contribution, from the age of 60 years. The same pension would be paid to the spouse of the subscriber and on the demise of both the subscriber and the spouse, the accumulated pension wealth as accumulated till age 60 of the subscriber is returned to the nominee.
The scheme is distributed through 266 registered APY Service-Providers consisting of various categories of banks and Department of Posts. As this scheme is only available to applicants with a savings bank account, therefore, PFRDA regularly advises all banks to promote the scheme for its outreach to their existing and prospective customers.
