Small Savings Schemes Interest Rates: The central government has announced interest rates for small savings schemes such as the Public Provident Fund, National Savings Schemes, and Senior Citizen Savings Scheme for the October-December 2025 quarter. The government has kept the interest rates on post office small savings schemes unchanged for this quarter. That is, the government has not made any changes to the interest rates for these schemes despite inflation and the reduction in the repo rate.
Know what are the interest rates?
Under this decision of the government, for the third quarter of the financial year 2025-26, Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS) will get an interest rate of 8.2 percent per annum, while Monthly Income Account Scheme will get an interest rate of 7.4 percent per annum. At the same time, the interest rate on National Savings Certificate (NSC) is 7.7 percent per annum, while the interest rate on Public Provident Fund (PPF) is 7.1 percent, Kisan Vikas Patra is 7.5 percent per annum. At the same time, the interest rate on Sukanya Samriddhi Account (SSA) will be 8.2 percent per annum.
Rates remained unchanged despite reduction in repo rate and inflation
It should be noted that in January this year, the Reserve Bank of India’s benchmark repo rate was 6.5 percent, which has been cut by 1 percent so far. The RBI had cut rates by 0.25-0.25 basis points in February and April, while a major cut of 0.5% was made in June. Currently, the repo rate is 5.5 percent. Meanwhile, retail inflation was recorded at 2.07 percent in August. Furthermore, the yield on 10-year government securities has declined from around 6.78 percent to 6.48 percent since January.
When was the last change?
It’s worth noting that interest rates on small savings schemes were last revised in January-March 2024. They have remained at that rate since then. At that time, the government raised the three-year fixed deposit (FD) rate from 7.0 percent to 7.1 percent, and the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana rate from 8.0 percent to 8.2 percent. Interest rates on most schemes remained unchanged during this period.
