The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, on Tuesday confirmed that the subscriber count for its New Pension Scheme reached more than five lakh till June-end.

It was reveled by Minister of State for Finance - Namo Narain Meena in a written reply to Upper House, Rajya Sabha.

"The total number of subscribers in the New Pension System as on June 30, 2009 was 5,40,244," the minister wrote.

The minister stated the taxation issues related to the scheme and confirmed that the issues have been given consideration in the Finance Bill, 2009.

"The Finance Bill, 2009 has proposed to extend the benefit of Section 80 CCD of the Income-Tax Act, 1961 to all individuals," the minister said.

Launched on 1 May 2009, the New Pension Scheme was extended to all citizens of the country. The scheme allows 50 percent of the investment in the stock markets.

The scheme was available at 22 Points of Presence (PoP). LIC, the only insurance company to be appointed as PoP, retreated from the distribution following IRDA issued guidelines, stating that life insurance companies could participate as pension fund managers only through a fully-owned subsidiary.

The scheme offers tax-benefits under Section 80 CCD of the Income-Tax Act, 1961 only to salaried class and employees of Central Government. Further, the accumulated pension wealth is taxable at the time of withdrawal.

The Finance Bill 2009, proposes to extend the tax-benefits from the scheme to other classes (like self-employed) and also exempt the tax on accumulated pension fund at time of withdrawal if the amount is used for annuity purchase in the year of exit.

The corpus in NPS of the Central Government employees amounts to over Rs.2100 crore. During financial year 2008-09, the three Pension Funds have generated returns varying from 12 to 16 percent (unaudited results).

The organization has plans to roll NPS Savings Account by the end of the year.