The Central Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund on Tuesday unanimously decided to defer a decision on the rate of interest on EPF till July 20.

This was announced by CITU secretary W R Varada Rajan after a marathon meeting of the CBT in New Delhi.

• EPFO may put off decision on rate

Varada Rajan said the CBT would meet again on July 20 as no decision could be arrived at today's meeting.

While the trade unions demanded raising the interest rate to 12 per cent from 9.5 per cent now, the government, according to CITU, proposed a further reduction of interest rate at eight per cent.

"We have rejected the Centre's proposal outright and conveyed it to Labour Minister and Chairman of the CBT Sis Ram Ola in writing," another CITU leader Tapan Sen said in a press release.

Trade union sources said CITU, AITUC, HMS and UTUC-LS would seek an early meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to press for the review of the budgetary proposals in respect of the issues raised by them including interest rate on SDS, GPF and PPF.

In their joint letter to the labour minister, they urged him to lead a delegation of the CBT to meet the prime minister for resolving the issue.

"We record our stand that any proposal on the interest rate on EPF for 2004-05, not in line with the above demand, is totally unacceptable to us," they said in the letter.