PM CARES received Rs 3076 crore in five days from India, abroad

New Delhi: The PM CARES Fund was started with an initial corpus of Rs 2.25 lakh and received over Rs 3,076 crore as contributions from India and abroad within the first five days of it being set up. This has been revealed by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in the first audited ‘receipts and payments account’ of PM CARES for the financial year 2019-20. The same has been audited by the chartered accountant firm SARC & Associates and signed on by four officials from the PMO on behalf of the fund, which was set up on March 27.

It has not been specified who contributed towards the initial corpus. The first trustees of the fund are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, all in ex-officio capacity. Three more trustees can be appointed by the PM who is the chairperson. The audited statement mentions accompanying notes to the financial statement, regarding the domestic and foreign contributions but those have not been made public. Names of the contributors are also not in the public domain. Such accompanying notes and names of contributors are also not made public regarding the PM National Relief Fund (PMNRF) in the audited statements.

The statement of the PM CARES Fund mentions fund Rs 3075.85 core was received as voluntary contributions and Rs 39.67 lakh as foreign contributions till March 31. The fund earned an interest of Rs 35.32 lakh on these amounts. The statement mentions that the fund paid Rs 2,049 as service tax on Forex conversion and had a closing balance of Rs 3076.62 crore as on March 31. On May 13, Rs 3,100 crore was allocated from the PM CARES Fund for the supply of 50,000 ‘Made in India’ ventilators to government hospitals for migrant labourers and for vaccine development. Earlier this month, the PMO had said the money has also been allocated to set up two 500-bed Covid-19 hospitals in Bihar.