New Delhi:
As many as 400 infrastructure projects,each worth Rs 150 crore or more, have been hit by total cost overruns of over Rs 4 lakh crore owing to delays and other reasons, according to a report. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation monitors infrastructure projects worth Rs 150 crore and above.
Of such 1,698 projects, 400 projects reported cost overruns and 578 projects time escalation.
"Total original cost of implementation of the 1,698 projects was Rs 20,41,114.88 crore and their anticipated completion cost is likely to be Rs 24,41,837.32 crore, which reflects overall cost overruns of Rs 4,00,722.44 crore (19.63 per cent of original cost)," the ministry's latest report for November 2019 said.
The expenditure incurred on these projects till November 2019 is Rs 10,50,331.59 crore, which is 43.01 per cent of the anticipated cost of the projects.
However, the number of delayed projects decreases to 484 if delay is calculated on the basis of latest schedule of completion.
Further, it said that for 728 projects neither the year of commissioning nor the tentative gestation period has been reported.
Out of 578 delayed projects, 190 projects have overall delay in the range of 1 to 12 months, 121 projects in the range of 13 to 24 months, 146 projects reflect delay in the range of 25 to 60 months and 121 projects show delay of 61 months and above.
The average time overrun in these 578 delayed projects is 38.84 months.
The brief reasons for time overruns, as reported by various project implementing agencies, are delays in land acquisition, forest clearance and supply of equipment.
Besides, there are other reasons like fund constraints, geological surprises, geo-mining conditions, slow progress in civil works, shortage of labour, inadequate mobilisation by the contractor, Maoist problems, court cases, contractual issues, ROU/ROW (right of use/right of way) problems, law and order situation, among others, the report said.
It also observed that project agencies are not reporting revised cost estimates and commissioning schedules for many projects, indicating that time or cost overrun figures are under-reported.
As part of its plan to spend Rs 100 lakh crore on infrastructure sector across the country by 2024-25, the government has started work on projects worth Rs 42.7 lakh crore, says a report by the Task Force constituted to draw up the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) for each financial year between 2019-20 and 2024-25.
In order to achieve the GDP of $5 trillion by 2024-25, the government has envisaged investment of about $1.4 trillion (Rs 100 lakh crore) over these years on infrastructure. To achieve this objective, a Task Force was constituted to draw up the NIP for each of the years from 2019-20 to 2024-25 with the approval of the Finance Minister.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise at the Independence Day speech this year, the government has identified infrastructure projects to the tune of Rs 105 lakh crore. The minister said that Rs 102 lakh crore worth of infrastructure projects have been identified for the next five years as part of the government's spending push in the sector. The minister said that another Rs 3 lakh crore of projects are likely to be added in this pipeline by the states, taking the total to Rs 105 lakh crore of projects.
Out of the total expected capital expenditure of Rs 102 lakh crore, projects worth Rs 42.7 lakh crore (42 per cent) are under implementation, projects worth Rs 32.7 lakh crore (32 per cent) are in conceptualisation stage and projects worth Rs 19 lakh crore are in the development stage.The projects would be largely in sectors such as Energy (24 per cent), Roads (19 per cent), Urban (16 per cent), and Railways (13 per cent).As per the plan, Rs 13.6 lakh crore is estimated to be invested in the current financial year, Rs 19.5 lakh crore and Rs 19 lakh crore in the subsequent financial years.