20% increase in actual CSR spend in FY 2017

NEW DELHI: According to latest CSR Report compiled by NGO Box, CSR spend increased by 20% on YoY basis in the year 2017. Report analysed CSR data of financial year 2016-17, of 100 BSE listed companies. In this report a comparison has been done of FY2015-16 CSR data and FY 2016-17 CSR data of same set of 100 companies. These 100 companies command almost 33% of the prescribed CSR of all companies falling under the ambit of CSR compliance in India FY 2016-17. All of these companies are with prescribed CSR of Rs 1 Cr. or above and No public sector enterprise has been included in the analysis.

Highlights of CSR Spend in FY 2017

Actual CSR spend increased by 20% on YoY basis
36% companies could not meet the CSR compliance while this number was 44%in FY 2016
Actual CSR spend is 88% of the prescribed CSR, while the same was 86% in FY 2016
Almost 1/3rd of the companies spent more than the prescribed CSR
21% companies (same set of companies) spent more than the prescribed CSR in both FY 2017 and FY 2016
55% of CSR spend is through implementing partners
Almost 1/3rd of CSR fund was spent on education projects while another 1/3rd was spent on rural development and healthcare projects.
Addressing hunger and malnutrition and environment sustainability related projects are gaining new grounds as there seems to be substantial increase in CSR spend in these areas.

The responses of 36 companies that could not spend the prescribed CSR show glaring fact that many of them (almost 1/3rd) are still setting up internal processes or are confused about what and where they need to focus on.

There are companies who managed to spend the remaining fund of previous year but could not spend the 2017’s CSR fund. This is just one part of it.

There are cases where companies had committed CSR fund to partners, released initial tranches of fund but implementing partners could not spend the CSR fund and by the time companies realised that their partner NGOs did note have capacities to implement the projects, the financial year was about to over.