Close NPS (National Pension Scheme) account to simplify FBAR?

[mego2i]

Hello,

I am a USC. Last year, I opened an NPS account because one of the banks(ICICI, i think) had some people visiting the company site to help with this. Since I had not done any kind of investments in India after R2I (except couple of FDs), I thought this was a good way to put something away for retirement. However, I did not end up funding anything last year. This year(from April), it seems that some amount automatically started going into the account from my salary. I sat down to do my FBAR today, and have following questions:

1. Does the NPS account need to be disclosed in 2017 FBAR if it did not have any amount in it?
2. Since NPS invests in mutual funds, do I know have to start doing the PFIC declaration from next year?
3. If #2 is correct, then is the hassle of PFIC declaration worth the tax savings of NPS? Should I just close the account before it gets too large? It currently has about Rs. 1.6L

I did lots of searching, but there are no questions at all about NPS and FBAR. Does no one have any questions about this?

Thanks for the responses.