Your small savings schemes may be frozen if Aadhaar, PAN not submitted by Sept 30

Individuals who have opted to invest in small savings schemes such as Public Provident Fund (PPF), Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS), National Savings Certificate, among others must mandatorily submit their Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Aadhaar card documents by September 30, 2023. Failure to do the same may result in the suspension of the accounts until the documents are provided, as per government's notification.

Account suspension means investors won't be able to perform transactions.

However, if investors have already provided these documents, there's no need to submit them again. For new users who started investing in small savings schemes from April 1, 2023, PAN has become mandatory. This means that if an individual opened an account after this date, he/she is not required to submit Aadhaar and PAN by September 30.

Small savings schemes are popular investment avenues where still majority of Indians, especially senior citizens, prefer to save. Notably, the interest rates on small savings schemes are reviewed every quarter by the government. For the July-September 2023 quarter, the government hiked interest rates of select small savings schemes by 10 to 30 bps. The two-year time deposit rate was increased by 10 bps, while 5-year recurring deposit rate was increased by 30 bps. The interest rates of schemes like the Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS), Public Provident Fund (PPF), Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) and Sukanya Samriddhi Account Scheme (SCSS), however, were unchanged.

The PPF have been unchanged from April-June 2020, when it was cut to 7.1 percent from 7.9 percent. Prior to that, it was cut in July-September 2019. It was last raised in October-December 2018 to 8 percent from 7.6 percent.