Questions over foreign donations for PM-CARES

Income, expenditure details unknown

04/04/2020, PRISCILLA JEBARAJ,NEW DELHI

Indians were directed to mobilise donations from abroad with SWIFT code.

The government has sent conflicting signals over the question of foreign donations to the new Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund.

Initially, Indian ambassadors were directed to mobilise donations from abroad, with SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) code details made available in order to accept such contributions. However, the Centre has now seemed to take a step back, indicating that foreign funds would be accepted only from individuals and foundations, with details of foreign donations unavailable for now.

The PM-CARES Fund also does not seem to have any website with details of objectives, income and expenditure as yet, raising concerns about its transparency and accountability.

Repeated queries on these issues sent to a senior official at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) remain unanswered.

Public charitable trust

PM-CARES is a public charitable trust launched on March 28 as a “dedicated national fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like the one posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected,” according to the original press statement.

That statement, as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first tweets on PM-CARES, included both an IFSC code as well as a SWIFT code. However, the donation link on the PM’s website now says that “account details for foreign donations will be available in 2-3 days”. Only the IFSC code is available on the donation link.

Government sources now say that the “PM CARES Fund will simply accept donations and contributions from individuals and organisations who are based in foreign countries.” . They pointed to an official statement in August 2018 that contributions from “NRIs, PIOs and international entities such as foundations would be welcome.”

While this seems to indicate that the PM-CARES Fund will not accept foreign funds from governmental or corporate sources, it does seem prepared to accept unlimited tax-free donations from Indian corporates.