The money itself kept piling up. PM CARES closed 2024-25 with ₹8,452 crore, up from ₹7,173 crore a year earlier. Most of it is now locked away: ₹7,846 crore sits in fixed deposits with banks, with another ₹605 crore in savings accounts. Those deposits are working hard — the fund earned about ₹475 crore in interest in 2024-25 alone, more than 500 times what it spent. On top of that, donors still gave close to ₹480 crore during the year, and implementing agencies returned ₹324.66 crore of earlier allotments, with no breakdown in the statement of which agencies sent it back or why.
