344 infra projects report cost overrun of Rs 3.16 lakh crore

15 Apr 2019 Evaluate

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) in its latest report for December 2018 has indicated that as many as 344 infrastructure projects, each worth Rs 150 crore or above, have reported cost overrun of Rs 3.16 lakh crore, mainly due to delays and other reasons. Of these 1,424 projects monitored by the MOSPI, 344 reported cost overruns and 384 time escalation. 

According to the report, the expenditure incurred on these projects till December 2018 was Rs 8,06,997.78 crore, which is 37.82 percent of the anticipated cost of the projects. However, it said the number of delayed projects decreases to 326 if delay is calculated on the basis of latest schedule of completion. For 686 projects, neither the year of commissioning nor the tentative gestation period has been reported. Out of 384 delayed projects, 113 projects have overall delay in the range of 1 to 12 months, 61 are delayed by 13 to 24 months, 101 reflect delay of 25 to 60 months and 109 projects show 61 months and above delay. The average time overrun in these 384 delayed projects is 44.78 months.

The report attributes the time overrun to a host of issues, including land acquisition, forest clearance and supply of equipment, fund constraint, Maoist incursion, legal cases and law and order situation. 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, among others. It also observed that project agencies are not reporting revised cost estimates and commissioning schedules for many projects, which suggests that time/cost overrun figures are under-reported.

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