Under mounting pressure from the finance ministry to reduce the "unsustainable" 9.5 per cent interest on Empolyees Provident Fund, the Central Board of Trustees of EPF is likely to meet on May 31 to take a view on the rate to be paid for the current year.

As a prelude to the meeting, CBT's finance and investment sub-committee, which has been mandated to go into the investment strategies of the over Rs 1,40,000 crore (Rs 1,400 billion) corpus EPF and submit the report, is slated to meet on May 22.

Though the labour minister Sahib Singh Verma, who is the CBT chairman, had been saying that he would try to maintain the present 9.5 per cent interest, official sources said that it would be "highly" impossible considering that the return on EPF had dipped to 8.25 per cent.

This had been mainly due to lower returns on the special deposit schemes, which comprise over 80 per cent of the EPFO corpus, they said, citing that the Centre had recently cut the interest rate on SDS by one per cent.

Verma had admitted that CBT had issued a circular to the regional provident commissioners to stop paying interest from April, saying further orders would be given only after getting the report of the sub-committee.