Even after the Covid epidemic, donations to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) kept coming in, totalling Rs 912 crore in the fiscal year 2022–2023.
The PM CARES Funds received 2.57 crore in foreign contributions and 909.64 crore in voluntary contributions in 2022–2023, the most recent year for which audited financial statements are publicly available. Along with Rs 912 crore in donations, the Fund also received Rs 170.38 crore in interest revenue, of which Rs 16.07 crore came from overseas contributions accounts and Rs 154 crore from interest on normal accounts. It also received about Rs 225 crore in form of refunds from various sources, including refund (Rs 202 crore) from procurement of 50,000 ‘Made in India’ ventilators to government hospitals run by the Centre/States/UTs.
The PM CARES Fund disbursed a total of Rs 439 crore in payments and disbursals during the fiscal year 2022–2023. This included Rs 346 crore for PM CARES for children, Rs 91.87 crore for the purchase of 99,986 oxygen concentrators, Rs 1.51 crore for contribution reimbursement, Rs 24,000 for legal fees, and Rs 278 for bank and SMS fees. The PM CARES Fund’s closing balance at the end of the fiscal year 2022–2023 was Rs 6,284 crore, a 16 percent increase from Rs 5,416 crore at the end of the fiscal year 2021–2022. At the end of 2020–21, the closing balance was Rs 7,014 crore, and at the end of 2019–20, it was Rs 3,077 crore.
During the four years from 2019–20 to 2022–23, the PM CARES Fund received a total of Rs 13,605 crore, which was made up of both foreign contributions (Rs 538 crore) and voluntary contributions (Rs 13,067 crore). Its interest income during this time was Rs 565 crore. On March 27, 2020, three days after the nation was placed under lockdown due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the PM CARES Fund was registered as a Public Charitable Trust in New Delhi under the Registration Act, 1908. It was established “with the primary goal of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected,” with the intention of establishing a specific fund.
The Prime Minister serves as the PM CARES Fund’s ex-officio chairman, while the Finance, Home, and Defence Ministers serve as its ex-officio trustees. Justice K T Thomas (retd.) and Kariya Munda have been nominated as trustees by the Prime Minister, who serves as the chair of the PM CARES Fund Board of Trustees. “Donations to the PM CARES Fund would qualify for 80G benefits for 100% exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961,” according to the Fund’s website. Under the Companies Act of 2013, contributions to the PM CARES Fund will also be eligible to be counted as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenses.
