The PM CARES Fund had a closing balance of Rs 8,452.06 crore at the end of March 2025, with nearly 93% of the money parked in fixed deposits, while its total expenditure during the financial year was only Rs 87.85 lakh, according to its latest audited statement. The statement for 2024-25, uploaded on the official PM CARES website and signed on August 6 and 7, 2026, shows that Rs 7,846.65 crore was held in fixed deposits and another Rs 605.41 crore in savings bank accounts. The Fund earned around Rs 475 crore in interest during the year, almost matching the roughly Rs 480 crore it received in fresh donations.
PM CARES Fund earns nearly Rs 475 crore from money parked in banks
Domestic donations during 2024-25 stood at Rs 479.04 crore, while foreign donations were Rs 92.83 lakh. Against this, the PM CARES Fund earned Rs 469.37 crore in interest from fixed deposits and Rs 5.77 crore from savings accounts. It also received Rs 13.49 lakh as a refund of TDS deducted on FD interest.
The Fund’s balance rose from Rs 7,173 crore to Rs 8,452 crore during the year. Its fixed deposits increased by about Rs 1,205 crore, from Rs 6,641.56 crore on March 31, 2024, to Rs 7,846.65 crore by the end of March 2025.
PM CARES Fund spends just Rs 87.85 lakh during FY25
Despite the large corpus, expenditure remained limited. The statement records payments of Rs 87.85 lakh, of which Rs 87.84 lakh went to the PM CARES for Children Scheme. The only other expenditure listed was Rs 451 in bank and SMS charges.
The latest disclosure came more than a year after the financial year ended on March 31, 2025. The PM CARES Fund says it was created as a public charitable trust with the “primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation” and providing “relief to the affected”. Its stated objectives include responding to public health emergencies and disasters, improving healthcare infrastructure, funding research and assisting affected people.
PM CARES Fund refund of Rs 324 crore raises questions
The statement also records Rs 324.66 crore as a “Refund from Implementing Agencies”, nearly four times the Rs 84.31 crore returned in the previous financial year. However, the one-page statement does not identify the agencies, explain why the money was returned or state which projects the funds were originally released for.
Reportedly, transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj questioned the entries and the low spending. “A fund set up to help citizens during disasters, which has accumulated thousands of crores (including from foreign sources), is shrouded in secrecy,” Bhardwaj wrote on X. She also asked which agencies returned the Rs 324 crore, why it was refunded, what the original payments were for and whether any refunds involved faulty equipment.
The statement refers to “Note 11” for the implementing agency refund and says accompanying notes numbered 1 to 16 exist. Bhardwaj questioned why those notes were not uploaded with the statement.
PM CARES Fund audit delay adds to transparency concerns
The accounts were signed around 16 months after the financial year ended. Pune-based Chartered Accountant Atul Modani claimed the FY2023-24 and FY2024-25 audits were completed together after a gap of nearly two years. He also said the uploaded audited statement did not show a Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN), which he described as a possible oversight that should be corrected.
As per reports, Chartered Accountant Ruchita Vaghani also questioned the gap between money received by the Fund and the amount spent.
The PM CARES Fund has faced transparency questions since its launch in March 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Critics questioned why a new fund was needed when the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) and PM National Relief Fund already existed, and also raised concerns over CAG audits and RTI scrutiny. The Centre has maintained that PM CARES is a public charitable trust funded entirely by voluntary contributions, with no budgetary or government money, and is not a “public authority” under the RTI Act.
PM CARES Fund remains under scrutiny over utilisation and disclosure
In August 2020, the Supreme Court rejected a plea seeking transfer of PM CARES money to the NDRF, holding that the two were “entirely different funds with different objects and purposes”. It also noted that NDRF is audited by the CAG, while PM CARES, as a public charitable trust, did not require a CAG audit on that basis.
Most recently, the Cockroach Janta Party called for a probe into the Fund while responding to an activist who had demanded information on its founder Abhijeet Dipke’s “funding”. In January, Tamil Nadu’s then Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin alleged that PM CARES had collected nearly Rs 30,000 crore during Covid-19 but lacked transparency over its utilisation.
PM CARES Fund official audit statement: Audited Statement 2024-25
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Khalid Lateef is a Sub-Editor at NewsX Digital, specializing in Indian politics and global affairs. He also covers viral trending stories and major crime developments.
The post PM CARES Fund’s Corpus Crosses Rs 8,450 Crore; Rs 475 Crore Earned In Interest, Rs 87.85 Lakh Spent appeared first on NewsX.