The spending under the corporate social responsibility (CSR) by the NSE listed companies has seen a huge increase of 28% in 2015-16. The Companies Act (2013) has statutory provisions, making the CSR mandatory for companies with net worth of Rs 500 crore or more, turnover of at least Rs 1,000 crore and net profit of at least Rs 5 crore are required to spend at least 2 percent of their average net profits of last 3 years on CSR activities, while constituting a separate committee on their board. The law, implemented from April 2014, makes India the only country with legislated CSR.

There are 1,579 companies listed on NSE, 1,520 companies were listed during 2015-16 (balance 59 have got listed subsequent to April 2016). Out of 1,520 companies, annual reports for 2015-16 have been released by 1,421 companies.

Of these 1,421 companies, 1,332 had details relating to CSR given in the annual reports, while no such details were available for the rest of the 89 companies.

Of the 1,332 companies, 920 were applicable under the provisions of CSR in the Companies Act, up from 895 companies in 2014-15. The analysis is thus based on the data of 920 companies.

According to Prime Database, which compiles data on capital markets and related matters, which has done analysis of this data - the average net profit of these 920 companies over last 3 years was Rs 4.60 lakh crore. As per the CSR provision, the companies were required to spend Rs 9,146 crore. The companies, however, went one step further and spent Rs 9,309 crore, Rs 163 crore more than the requirement.

However, Rs 1,984 crore remain unspent and the final actual CSR expenditure by these companies was Rs 8,345 crore. This is an increase of 28 percent from Rs 6,526 crore spent in 2014-15.

The data shows that the maximum spending of CSR by the companies has been on the education sector, followed by Healthcare.
In comparison to previous year, CSR spending as contribution to PMs funds saw the maximum increase by 418% from Rs 168 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 701 crore in 2015-16. This was followed by spending on hunger/poverty (66% increase) and gender equality (38 %). Meanwhile, spending on child mortality and maternal health saw the maximum fall with 22 %. According to Pranav Haldea, allocation as a percent of total under different schedules though remained fairly constant.

According to data the top 10 companies in terms of CSR spend are

According to Haldea, PSU spending saw a huge increase of 41 % from previous year. The 48 PSUs spent Rs 2,078 crore in 2014-15. Whereas, 47 PSUs spent Rs 2,936 crore in 2015-16.

The CSR Act also mandates companies to appoint a CSR committee comprising at least 3 members of the board of which at least 1 should be independent. 1197 out of 1520 companies had such a CSR committee in place. Several companies though went beyond the requirement. According to Haldea, as many as 331 companies had appointed more than 3 members.