Education, healthcare top India Inc’s CSR ‘spend’ list

Education & skill development, healthcare & sanitation, rural development projects and environment topped the ‘cause-list’ of Indian companies, mandated to allocate a portion of their profits to community development.

The four above-named ‘causes’ pocketed over 80 per cent of net CSR allocations in FY15, a CRISIL study reported.

About 1300 listed companies in India fell under the ‘mandatory 2 per cent CSR spend’ ambit of which, as many as 75 per cent have formally reported CSR activity, spending on average 1.35 per cent of their net profit – or well below the mandatory 2 per cent, the report said.

"Compliance towards CSR in fiscal 2015 seems to be inversely proportional to size of the company – those with high turnover were short on the 2 per cent mandatory spending," clarified Ramraj Pai, president of CRISIL Foundation.

Investments in incubation centres for technology development, and support for armed forces veterans/families were the least preferred segments, the CRISIL study pointed out. Despite a 50 per cent tax break on donations to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, more than 90 per cent of the companies that spent on CSR chose to do so directly, thus preferring to forego the benefit.

Private sector companies have been as socially responsive as their public sector peers, and ended up spending marginally more than the latter. Another Rs 5,200 crore could have been spent had all companies met the 2 per cent norm, which would have taken the cumulative expenditure to Rs 12,000 crore for fiscal 2015, the CRISIL report added.

Indian companies have spent close to Rs 2250 crore on education & skill development programmes during the considered period. Healthcare, rural development and environment projects have received Rs 1875 crore, Rs 892 crore and Rs 623 crore respectively. CSR allocation towards ‘benefits for armed forces’ amounted to just Rs 15 crore.