10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Mahinda Jayasinghe

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Gampaha· 6 January 2026 ·Oral question: Oral Question: Balance Funds of Members of EPF - 30 Per Cent Withdrawal Permitted (Q.1436/2025)

Public FinanceEmployment
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Mahinda Jayasinghe stated that the EPF and ETF have distinct legal purposes, with the EPF intended to provide retirement social security for private and semi-government sector workers. He said the Government is considering options to strengthen post-retirement income security, including pension- or annuity-like payments alongside existing lump-sum withdrawals. He noted that the ETF, administered under the Ministry of Finance, serves a different role by providing benefits and facilitation, including support for entrepreneurship.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, EPF and ETF serve different purposes. EPF is for workers’ social security at retirement in the private and semi-government sectors. We are focusing on ensuring post-retirement social security—exploring options akin to a pension-like stream rather than only lump-sum withdrawals (not to abolish lump sums, but to consider annuity-like options). ETF, under the Ministry of Finance, is not a retirement social security fund in the same way; it provides benefits and facilitation, including pathways for entrepreneurship. Thus, the two laws function with different objectives.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 6 January 2026 ·No. 23111 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/17504

Cite as: The Hon. Mahinda Jayasinghe. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 6 January 2026. No. 23111. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/17504