'CSR: Education, healthcare, rural development top priority for corporate in India'
'CSR: Education, healthcare, rural development top priority for corporate in India'
New Delhi, 31 August 2020: When it comes to CSR spending in India, Education, skill development, healthcare, sanitation and rural development are the major focus areas for corporate, as per an analysis published by CRISIL Foundation.
The paper named ‘Doing Good in Bad Times- CRISIL CSR year book 2020’ says "Education and skill development, healthcare and sanitation, and rural development accounted for 75% of the total spend on CSR, up a good 500 basis points on-year." The prescribed CSR budget for a company is calculated as 2 % of the ‘average net profit’ of the company over last three years. Thus, the companies can exactly calculate how much they need to spend on CSR activities in a particular financial year.
The report further states that among these areas, education and skill development saw the highest CSR spending in the financial year 2019-20, in terms of both, number of companies spending (1,030) and proportion of total spend which went up to 36.16% from 35.03% of the previous year).
Healthcare and sanitation remained the second-highest, with its share of spend increasing to a notable 27.60% from 23.55% a year ago. The number of companies spending on this sector also increased to 881 from 813 the previous year, it added.
Rural development remained on the third position in terms of getting the CSR attention, with 310 companies spending on it compared to 281 previous year, and average spend highest among all categories. However, its share of the pie declined from 11.64% to 10.78%, the report underlines.