Country’s major infrastructure projects are moving at a snail’s pace. Of the 569 infrastructure projects above Rs 150 cr, more than half are running way behind the schedule.
The worst-hit sector among all is roads and highways. Almost 60 per cent of the major national highways projects — 89 out of 149 — are facing massive delays, according to reports on progress of these projects available with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI).
In the petroleum sector, of the 67 projects, 37 are facing delays. Similarly, over 50 per cent of 101 projects in the power sector are also facing time overrun. In the power sector, the highest number of mega projects, nine, are facing additional delays since March, this year.
Railways also accounts for 62 per cent of the overall cost escalation due to delays. The cost overrun in its 124 projects shot up 20 per cent to a whopping Rs 87,170 crore in March this year, compared to Rs 69,505 in March 2012. The originally sanctioned Rs 60,590 crore went up to Rs 147,761 crore.
“The reasons for delays are common across sectors — problems in land acquisition, law and order, forest and environmental clearances, equipment assembly, supply of material and change in scope of work, contractual issues and rising costs of raw material,” said and official from MOSPI. “A lot of projects are facing a major cash crunch. Cost estimations, which were made at the start of the projects, have gone skewed, because of the incessant delays, especially land acquisitions,” he said.
According to estimates, drawn out by MOSPI, the cost overrun in overall infrastructure projects must have increased by at least 6-8 per cent since March, this year. Most central projects costing almost Rs 1.40 lakh crore as on March 2013 were facing a cost overrun of Rs 9.29 lakh crore. This was 17.7 per cent more than the original cost of Rs 7.89 lakh crore. In March 2012, the cost overrun was 1.19 lakh crore, 16.5 per cent of the original cost in that month.
Officials monitoring the projects fear that the cost and time overrun could head further up if respective ministries don’t act. “Project agencies are not reporting revised cost estimates and commissioning schedules for many projects, which suggest time and cost overrun figures are grossly under-reported,” said MoSPI.
“Our work is to monitor the progress of these projects based on the data made available to us by the ministries and implementing agencies. There is a standing committee in each ministry to fix responsibility for cost and time overruns, where cost overruns are over 20 per cent and time overruns are over 10 per cent,” said an official.