NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said companies are expected to pump in as much as Rs 14,000 crore for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in 2014-15 and the amount will be increasing in subsequent years.
“… CSR alone in its very first year is going to contribute about Rs 14,000 crore into the (social) sector and that’s reasonably a large amount of money. This is going to increase year after year as corporate profits increase,” he said while speaking at a function organised jointly by the Jubilant Bhartia and Schwab foundations.
Under the new Companies Act, certain class of profitable companies are required to spend at least 2 per cent of their three-year average annual net profit for CSR activities.
The minister later gave India Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 award to Hanumappa Sudarshan of Karuna Trust.
As per the new Companies Act, a certain category of profit-making companies need to spend at least 2% of their three-year average annual net profit in CSR activities. He said that corporates entered late in the charitable activities, but he also expressed hope that they would contribute in charity in a big way.
“Its impact will now be fully seen. (It will be) appreciated by even those who are otherwise unaware or unwilling to recognise the contribution,” he said.
(PTI, 5 November 2014)
