Top 250 listed companies spent about Rs 2,073 on developing skill sets of youth in 2015-16; required total CSR spend was 8% less than mandated
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is stressing on developing the skills sets of the youth and India Inc is going the whole distance to achieve that goal.
The top 250 listed companies spent Rs 2,073 crore on 1,200 projects in skills sector as part of their corporate social resposibility (CSR) expenditure, according to the India CSR Outlook Report (ICOR) by NGOBox.
This is about one-third of Rs 7,140 crore they are required under the new Companies Act 2013 towards CSR .
Their total CSR expenditure was Rs 6,570 crore, about 92% of the manadated amount for the year, up from 79% in the previous fiscal.
Maharashtra, where most companies are headquartered, gets the largest CSR spend, or over 15% of total spending of 250 corporates, followed by West Bengal (8.7%) and Andhra Pradesh (6.3%).
The new Companies Act 2013, implemented in 2014, made it mandatory for companies with a net worth of Rs 500 crore or more, or with annual turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more to spend at least 2% of its average net profit for the preceding three financial years on CSR activities.
"About one-third of the companies have spent more than the mandated CSR fund suggesting that the companies who were doing social good and spending substantial fund on CSR before the mandatory CSR regime still continues the doing same with pushing the boundaries further for the good of communities," states the report.
Despite the fact that the Section 135 of the Companies Act mandates companies to prepare CSR report in a particular format, more than 30 companies were found hiding crucial information like project location, implementing partners, project specific budget and spend etc, the report said.
Many companies have not given the names of implementing partners and have used the term 'NGO partner' or 'various NGOs'. The researchers also have noticed lot of discrepancy in the CSR spending of several companies.
"A few companies spent the unspent amount of last year's CSR budget in this financial year and thus showing their actual CSR spend much higher than the prescribed CSR of this FY. We had to sanitise the data to present the clear picture of this financial year," the report said.
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