The retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation EPFO could earn only a meagre annualised return of 1.52 percent, on its investment of 2,322 crore rupees in ETFs during August to October period. SBI Mutual Fund was mandated to make the investments in its two exchange-traded funds — Sensex ETF and Nifty ETF. <br/><br/>The EPFO invested nearly 590 crore rupees in Sensex ETF, while over 1,730 crore rupees were put in Nifty ETF. The Sensex ETF has earned an annualised return of 2.97 percent for EPFO – nearly three-times of 1.03 per cent for the Nifty ETF.<br/><br/>This has led to the officials and fund managers beginning to have a rethink on their fund-allocation strategies, while the poor returns have also triggered calls from trade unions to altogether stop the stock market investments.<br/><br/>While the government is still hopeful of better returns over a longer period of time with right allocation of funds, saying three months is a very short time, the union members of EPFO are playing hardball and are asserting that they always warned against the risks associated with the stock market.<br/>