Any Indian citizen, resident or non-resident and OCIs are eligible to join NPS till the age of 65 years.
India’s Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has now permitted Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) to enroll in National Pension Scheme (NPS) at par with Non-resident Indians vide Circular No: PFRDA/2019/19/PDES/3 dated 29th October 2019.
The Government vide notification S.O. 3732(E) dated 17th October, 2019 on Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) Rules, 2019 of Dept. of Economic Affairs, has specified that an OCI may subscribe to the National Pension System 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.
Contributions made towards NPS are eligible for an additional tax deduction under section 80CCD(1B) upto Rs. 50,000 which is over and above the Rs 1,50,000 limit of deduction available under sec 80CCD(1).
In the Union Budget 2019, the tax exemption limit for lumpsum withdrawal on exit/maturity from NPS has been increased from the present 40% to 60% under section 10(12A) of the IT Act and the remaining 40% of the corpus is already tax-exempt as it is mandatorily utilized for annuity purchase.
As on 26th October 2019, the total number of subscribers under NPS and Atal Pension Yojana has crossed 3.18 crores and the Asset under management (AUM) has grown to Rs. 3,79,758 crores.
More than 66 lakhs government employees have been enrolled under NPS and 19.2 lakhs subscribers have subscribed to NPS in the private Sector with 6,812 entities registered as corporates.
PFRDA in its endeavor to promote and develop NPS has taken several Initiatives towards increasing the pension coverage in the country.
Now, any Indian citizen, resident or non-resident and OCIs are eligible to join NPS till the age of 65 years.