Arun Jaitley, Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs launched the National CSR Data Portal & Corporate Data Portal today in the presence of Shri P.P. Chaudhary, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs and Law & Justice.Shri Arun Jaitley said that the initiative is a significant step towards driving accountability and transparency for corporate India. By making the portals accessible to general public, it will ensure high level of compliance and also in institutionalising and consolidating the CSR activities.Shri P. P. Chaudhary, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs and Law & Justice, said that both the portals reflect the government’s commitment towards leveraging technology towards smart governance. He suggested that CSR project should be geo-tagged and aimed at seeing the poorest of the poor.Shri Chandrajit Banerjee, Managing Trustee, National Foundation for Corporate Governance (NFCG) and DG, CII, spoke about the importance of the legislation on CSR and how Indian industry has responded spontaneously to it. He added that the Corporate Data Portal would help in becoming a potent enabler for greater transparency and creation of tools for stronger Corporate Governance, he expected that the portals would also become platforms for learning and sharing of ideas and information.Shri Injeti Srinivas, Secretary, Corporate Affairs, stated that the dual launched had created a landmark in bringing about 100 percent transparencies in corporate governance by making public over 4-crore filings of nearly 1.2 million companies.
He added that the two portals would promote corporate transparency and accountability to public at large and also facilitate social audit of CSR projects, besides bringing together CSR contributors, implementers and beneficiaries and aligning CSR activities with national development goals.The National CSR Data Portal will capture information on CSR activities carried out by eligible companies, filed on the MCA21 registry in their financial statements. The filed information provides a snap shot of CSR activities carried out by companies. The CSR portal contains all filed information, which can generate pre-defined reports with respect to expenditure across states, districts, development sectors, etc. The Portal also provides for feedback on projects to be given by registered users. The open access to data is expected to help researchers, improve quality of data filed by companies, as well as involve intended beneficiaries in giving valuable feedback to companies.While the Corporate Data Portal aims at making all the financial and non-financial information of the companies available in a user friendly format to the general public. It also has facility to generate pre-defined reports and also customised reports.Officials from various ministries/departments, corporates, organisations and people from academia attended the event.