Sri Lanka ETF Calculator (Employees' Trust Fund)

The Employees' Trust Fund is a statutory defined-contribution fund set up by the Employees' Trust Fund Act No. 46 of 1980. Unlike EPF, it is entirely employer-funded — every month your employer pays 3% of your total earnings into your ETF account at the Employees' Trust Fund Board (ETFB). You pay nothing. The balance accrues annual interest at a rate the ETFB declares each year out of the fund's investment returns.

"Total earnings" here is the legal definition under §16(2) of the Act: basic salary + COLA + dearness allowance + holiday pay + leave pay. It excludes overtime, bonuses, gratuities, and expense reimbursements. The Department of Labour publishes the same definition for employer compliance audits.

The calculator applies these four steps:

1. Monthly contribution. monthly_contribution = total_earnings × 3%. Reference: ETF Act §16(1)(b).
2. Annual contribution and salary growth. Twelve monthly contributions get summed for the year. At year-end, your monthly salary grows by your stated increment rate (compounded year on year).
3. Interest credited (half-year convention). interest = (opening_balance + annual_contribution / 2) × rate. This is the convention the ETFB uses on member statements: a year's contributions are assumed to land evenly across the year, so the average sits at six months, hence the half-contribution interest base.
4. Closing balance. closing = opening + annual_contribution + interest. That closing rolls forward as next year's opening, and the cycle repeats for the full projection period.

Withdrawal eligibility is then checked against the rules in §§33–35 of the Act plus ETFB benefit conditions. Resignation requires at least 5 years of continuous contributions; retirement requires age 55 or above; termination, migration, death, and total permanent disablement are immediate; housing and medical are partial and circular-driven, so the tool flags eligibility but does not compute a partial amount. The calculator cross-checks its main year-by-year answer against a month-by-month compounding pass — a tighter compounding bound — to catch off-by-one errors before the number reaches you.

• Employees' Trust Fund Act No. 46 of 1980 (official English text — PDF)
• Employees' Trust Fund Board — declared interest rates and benefit conditions
• Department of Labour, Sri Lanka — 'total earnings' definition and employer obligations
• Inland Revenue Department — IRA Schedule 3 (ETF lump-sum tax exemption)

Contribution rate, withdrawal conditions, and interest convention were last cross-checked against the ETFB and Department of Labour sources on 2026-05-16. The page is reviewed when the ETFB publishes a new annual interest declaration or whenever the Act is amended.