NEW DELHI: The Sports Ministry will invite the country’s top businessmen to invest in the National Sports Development Fund (NSDF) as a part of a ‘public-private partnership’, Times of India reports.
The government will be looking to rope in those corporates who have a history of supporting sporting initiatives in the executive board that manages the NSDF.
NSDF is a non-taxable fund which is aimed at financing athletes for their training, exposure and equipment needs. It has played a vital hand in India winning medals at global competitions.
“We plan to invite India’s 11 top corporates to join the board of people running the NSDF. These will be those corporates who have had the record of spending big money on sports through their various corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. We will finalise this arrangement within the next three months as part of our efforts to professionalise the NSDF,” Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore told TOI.
“These corporates will play a major role in deciding the NSDF funding to athletes since through their personal efforts they would be able to concentrate the CSR of the corporate world in sports. One can’t essentially say that we (sports ministry) are trying to corporatise the NSDF funding. But it’s our way of bringing in more private players on a public-private partnership (PPP) funding model. We will call these 11 people ‘champions’ of sports,” he added.
