Cost of 101 infrastructure projects escalates by Rs1,29,000-crore

The cost of 101 major infrastructure projects across various sectors have reported Rs1,29,000 crore escalation both due to rising costs of implementation, official data released by the statistics ministry on Saturday showed.

The total project cost of 286 infrastructure projects, each worth over Rs1,000 crore, monitored by the ministry across sectors such as power, railways and roads in April 2016 have increased to Rs10,69,574.02 crore from Rs9,40,160.86 crore originally estimated.

"The total original cost of the 286 projects was about Rs9,40,160.86 crore and latest reported anticipated completion cost is Rs10,69,547.02 crore, which reflects an overall cost overrun of Rs1,29,386.16 crore," according to the latest report for April.

As per the report, out of the 286 projects, 2 projects are ahead of schedule, 54 are on schedule, 123 delayed and 101 projects reported cost overrun and 41 projects reported both time and cost overruns with respect to their original project implementation schedules.

During the month, out of 286 projects, 123 projects are delayed with respect to original schedule and 31 projects have reported additional delay vis-a-vis the date of completion reported in the previous month (March 2016).

The project delays are in the range of 1 to 13 months in cases of power, petroleum, urban development and road transport highways sectors.

It said the expenditure incurred on these projects till April is Rs4,57,160.26 crore. Out of 286 projects, 101 projects have cost overruns with respect to original cost.

Cost overrun of these is 101.72 per cent while during the last month, it was 103.84 per cent in 100 projects out of 278 monitored projects.

However, in percentage terms the number of projects reporting cost overruns decreased from 35.97 per cent to 35.31 per cent, in comparison with the previous month's figures, it said.

Out of 123 delayed projects, 22 projects reported overall delay in the range of 1 to 12 months, 18 projects are delayed by 13 to 24 months, 59 projects by 25 to 60 months and 24 projects are delayed by 61 months and above.

During April, there were 117 projects showing time overruns of more than 6 months and 99 projects having cost overruns of more than Rs100 crore and 40 projects where time overruns were more than 6 months and cost overruns more than Rs100 crore.

Speedy implementation of projects assumes significance in view of government's push to move towards high growth trajectory of over 8 percent and touch double-digit mark over the next few years.