PM CARES Fund collects ₹8,452 crore, spends only ₹87.85 lakh

Only ₹87.85 lakh was spent from the fund this year, which is about 0.1% of the total income for the year.

The PM CARES Fund has uploaded its audited financial statements for the fiscal years 2023-24 and 2024-25 on its website after a delay of two years. These documents were uploaded on August 17. The most startling fact in these details is that the interest of donors in contributing to the PM CARES Fund is waning. There has been a significant decline in both domestic and foreign donations. Moreover, the funds are not being spent in proportion to the donations received.

Indian Express reports,

In 2024-25, the total income of the PM CARES Fund was ₹1,279.9 crore. This includes interest from banks and FDs, and money returned by various agencies, apart from donations. However, only ₹87.85 lakh was spent from the fund this year, which is about 0.1% of the total income for that year.

In 2025, domestic donations to the PM CARES Fund decreased by 30% to approximately ₹479 crore. Foreign donations also declined, reducing by 18% to ₹92.8 lakh. In 2023, domestic donations were ₹681 crore and foreign donations were ₹1.13 crore. According to the audit report, the total amount in the fund was ₹7,173 crore in 2024. Foreign funding in this fund was ₹495 crore in 2020-21, which decreased to ₹40 crore and ₹2.57 crore in the next two fiscal years.

In 2023-24, ₹1.13 crore was received from foreign donations. In 2024-25, foreign contributions were ₹92.8 lakh, the lowest donation since ₹39.7 lakh received in 2019-20. In 2023, ₹15.37 crore was spent on the PM CARES for Children scheme. In 2024, this amount was ₹15.6 crore.

From the establishment of the fund in March 2020 to March 31, 2025, only 18.7% of its total income has been spent.

NCPRI co-convenor Anjali Bhardwaj questioned why such a large amount in the fund is being used so sparingly. Due to low expenditure, the total accumulated money in the PM CARES Fund has continued to grow. At the end of 2024-25, the fund's balance was ₹8,452.06 crore, about 17.8% more than the previous year.

Anjali Bhardwaj also questioned,

In 2024-25, various agencies returned ₹324 crore, but the report does not clarify for what purpose the money was given, why it was returned, and which agency returned it.

It is to be noted that the PM CARES Fund was established in March 2020 during the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to deal with emergencies and disasters. In the first three years, about ₹13,000 crore was collected in this fund, with approximately ₹3,000 crore raised in the first week alone. At the time of raising funds, the government had stated that this fund is allowed to accept amounts under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as it was established by the central government. Ministers also 'appealed' to government employees to donate their salaries. The central government had promised to give ₹20,000 annually to every school-going child orphaned during the corona pandemic as part of the major schemes of the PM CARES Fund. However, only ₹88 lakh was released for this scheme in the fiscal year 2024-25.

The government has reported 3,383 children as beneficiaries of this scheme. If ₹88 lakh is distributed among all these children, each child would receive only ₹2,596, whereas the declared assistance is ₹20,000 annually. In fact, this ₹88 lakh was the total expenditure from the PM CARES Fund in 2024-25. At that time, the fund had a total of ₹8,452 crore.

About 93% of this money was kept in fixed deposits. Recently, a CAG report revealed that the central government did not provide the full amount approved under NDRF to the states. A total assistance of ₹11,474 crore was approved from NDRF for severe disasters, but only ₹5,356 crore was given to the states. However, there is a difference between PM CARES and NDRF.

In 2020, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court demanding that the PM CARES amount be transferred to NDRF, as NDRF is audited by CAG. The central government opposed this, and the Supreme Court also stated that there is no need to transfer PM CARES money to NDRF. Before PM CARES, the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) already existed, which was created after the partition of the country. PMNRF is also outside the purview of RTI. Therefore, critics have been questioning why PM CARES was needed when PMNRF already existed. After the establishment of the PM CARES Fund, several Chinese companies made large donations to this fund just before tensions increased at the LAC on the India-China border.

According to a June 2020 report by National Herald, TikTok donated ₹30 crore, Xiaomi ₹10 crore, Huawei ₹7 crore, OnePlus ₹1 crore, and Oppo ₹1 crore (Oppo later stated that this donation was made to PMNRF).

Karnataka Home Minister and Congress leader Priyank Kharge wrote,

The PM CARES scheme is one of the biggest institutional scams and betrayals of public trust by Prime Minister Modi. Why is the Modi government collecting money from domestic and foreign donors in the name of emergency relief when it has no intention of using it in times of need? He questioned the low expenditure in this post.

Senior journalist Raju Parulekar raised questions,

The Receipts & Payments (R&P) Accounts for the first four years from 2019-20 to 2022-23 were also unsigned, but those documents had UDIN. So the question is why the new two accounts for 2023-24 and 2024-25 do not have UDIN? While a Chartered Accountant has 60 days to issue UDIN, why was it not issued on a priority basis in such an important and discussed matter? Another important question is that if Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, and Nirmala Sitharaman personally and collectively claim or support that PM CARES is a private institution, then why are secretaries, directors, under secretaries, and even section officers, who are paid from the government treasury, signing the Receipts & Payments Accounts of PM CARES? The question is, if PM CARES is a private institution, in what capacity are government officials signing its financial documents?

The PM CARES Fund is not considered a government fund. The government has already stated that it is a charitable fund and does not directly fall under the purview of RTI. However, the matter of this fund and its RTI coverage is pending in the Supreme Court. The PM CARES Fund is not audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). An independent chartered accountant audits it. Recently, the PMO informed the Lok Sabha Secretariat that questions related to the PM CARES Fund and other interventions in Parliament are not admissible under the rules of procedure and conduct of business in the Lok Sabha.