National Savings Certificate (NSC) Interest Rate July-September 2023: The NSC interest rate for the July-September quarter of FY 2023-24 was announced today (June 30). The Finance Ministry has decided to keep the NSC interest rate unchanged at 7.7%.
Earlier, NSC account holders were hoping for a further hike in the interest rate. However, another hike was unlikely as the Government increased the NSC interest rate increased in the last quarter.
In the April-June quarter of FY 2023-24, the NSC interest rate was increased to 7.7%. The account allows investors to deposit any amount. The minimum amount is Rs 1000 and thereafter in multiples of Rs 100. Up to Rs 1.5 lakh per year in an NSC account can be claimed as a tax deduction under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act. The interest earned from NSC deposits is not tax-free.
In the last two quarters of 2023, the Finance Ministry has increased interest rates for small savings schemes like Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS), National Savings Certificate (NSC), Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY) account, Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), and Post Office deposit schemes like Post Office Time Deposit, Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (POMIS) and Post Office Recurring Deposit (RD). Only the interest rate for Public Provident Fund (PPF) interest rate has remained unchanged.
As the RBI has paused the repo rate hike, after increasing it by 2.5% since May 2022, there was very little scope for a further hike in the NSC account interest rate today.
The interest rates of small savings schemes, including NSC, are linked to yields of Government Securities (G-Secs). The Finance Ministry reviews the interest rates of small savings schemes like National Savings Certificates every quarter of a financial year. The review is done on the basis G-Secs yields of the previous three months.
The interest rates offered by the Government on most of the small savings schemes, including NSC, are already at par with fixed deposits offered by banks. Therefore, the chances of a further increase in the NSC interest rate were low. Moreover, in view of RBI’s repo rate hike pause and falling inflation, experts believed there was not much room for an upward revision of the NSC interest rate.