For years, people have been asking questions about the PM CARES Fund: How much money is in it? Where is it being spent?
Recently, a new financial report (audit) for the year 2024-25 was released, and it finally gives us some answers. The numbers are huge, and they have sparked a fresh debate about how the fund is managed.
Lots of Money Coming In, Very Little Going Out
The most surprising part of the report is the difference between what the fund earned and what it actually spent last year.
Huge Savings: Right now, the PM CARES Fund has a massive total balance of ₹8,452 crore sitting in the bank.
Low Spending: In the 2024-25 period, the fund received about ₹1,280 crore. However, it only spent around ₹88 lakh. To put that in perspective, that means they spent less than 1% of what they earned last year.
Where is the money from? Most of the donations came from within India (about ₹479 crore), while only a small amount (around ₹93 lakh) came from foreign countries.
A Mysterious Refund: The fund received a massive refund of about ₹325 crore. However, the report does not explain where this money was originally sent or why it was returned.
Earning from Interest: The fund isn’t just growing from donations. A lot of the money was moved into Fixed Deposits (FDs). Because of this, the fund made a whopping ₹475 crore just from bank interest!
The Big Debate: Is it a Government Fund or a Private One?
One of the biggest arguments about the PM CARES Fund is that the public cannot easily get information about it.
Usually, citizens can use the Right to Information (RTI) law to ask the government where public money is going. The government’s official auditor (the CAG) and the Parliament also check government spending. But none of them are allowed to investigate the PM CARES Fund.
Why? Because legally, the PM CARES Fund is registered as a “private trust.” Since it doesn’t run on the government’s official budget, it doesn’t have to answer to these regular checks.
However, critics say this is confusing because the fund looks and acts very much like a government body:
The Prime Minister is the head of the fund.
Top government officials, like the Defense, Home, and Finance Ministers, manage it.
It uses an official government website address ending in “.gov.in”.
It receives special tax-free money from big companies and even took contributions from the salaries of government workers.
What Happens Next?
Since the PM CARES Fund was created in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has only spent about 18% of the total money it has collected. The rest of the money is mostly locked away in bank deposits.
Because so much money is just sitting there, many people are asking for more honesty and transparency. Experts believe that if the fund shared its details openly and made a clear plan to spend this wealth on the public, it would build a lot more trust with the people of India.