Sports activities affected as CSR funds diverted

KARACHI: The economic fallout of Covid-19 will seriously affect financial commitments of sports activities in the next few months.

It has been learnt that local and multinational companies have already diverted their Corporate Social Responsibility funds to the national corona fund.

In March, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP ) directed the corporate sector of the country to divert their CSR budgets for a timely and effective response to COVID-19 outbreak.

Since a portion of CSR funds is used by the companies for sponsoring sports activities here, this diversion of funds to fight Covid-19 will seriously affect the sports events in the country.

“We don’t see any sports activity in the next few months due to the unavailability of sponsorship,” said an organiser while talking to ‘The News’.

The organiser added that only the already planned or those events that got postponed are to be staged once the environment becomes conducive.

“The current financial crunch will not guarantee sponsorship for new events at least for sometime in the near future,” said the organiser.

For example, he added, four national tennis events planned in the second half of the current year are likely to face funding problem. Besides private sponsorship, the government’s sponsorships have also got affected due to the current situation in the country. It has been learnt the quarterly budget of Sindh Sports Board worth millions of rupees is to lapse on May 15 without any utilisation due to lock-down in the province. No sports activities have been conducted or planned by SSB due to lock-down in the entire province since March 23.