The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) received Rs 912 crore in contributions during the financial year 2022-23 as donations continued to pour in even after the Covid pandemic. The PM CARES Funds received Rs 909.64 crore as voluntary contributions and Rs 2.57 crore as foreign contributions during 2022-23, the latest year for which audited accounts are available in the public domain. In addition to donations of Rs 912 crore, the Fund also received Rs 170.38 crore as interest income, of which Rs 154 crore came from interest on regular accounts and Rs 16.07 crore from foreign contributions account. 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 As far as payments and disbursals are concerned, the PM CARES Fund disbursed the total amount of Rs 439 crore during financial year 2022-23 — Rs 346 crore on PM CARES for children, Rs 91.87 crore for procurement of 99,986 oxygen concentrators, Rs 1.51 crore on contribution refunded, Rs 24,000 on legal charges and Rs 278 on bank charges and SMS charges. At the end of financial year 2022-23, the closing balance in the PM CARES Fund stood at Rs 6,284 crore, which was 16 per cent higher as compared to Rs 5,416 crore at the end of fiscal year 2021-22. The closing balance stood at Rs 7,014 crore at the end of 2020-21 and Rs 3,077 crore at the end of 2019-20. In all, the PM CARES Fund received a total of Rs 13,605 crore — as voluntary contributions (Rs 13,067 crore) and foreign contributions (Rs 538 crore) — in the four years from 2019-20 to 2022-23. During this period, it received Rs 565 crore as interest income. The PM CARES Fund was registered as a Public Charitable Trust under the Registration Act, 1908 in New Delhi on March 27, 2020, three days after the lockdown in the country in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was set up “keeping in mind the need for having a dedicated fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected.” The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the PM CARES Fund, while the Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister are ex-officio trustees of the Fund. The Prime Minister, as the chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the PM CARES Fund, has nominated Justice K T Thomas (retd.) and Kariya Munda as trustees. The Fund’s website states: “Donations to PM CARES Fund would qualify for 80G benefits for 100% exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961. Donations to the PM CARES Fund will also qualify to be counted as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure under the Companies Act, 2013.”
