Infra project delays upset central govt

Centre suspects that there is underreporting in the financial figures of infra projects in both time and cost overruns; Administrative ministries concerned may review these projects

PM Taking A Call

- PM instructs stakeholders regarding delays and cost escalations

- Interacting with the Chief Secretaries of States and UTs

- Out of 1,568 central infra projects costing Rs150 crore and above, 721 projects were delayed

- 108 projects reported additional delays vis-à-vis their date of completion reported in the previous month

Hyderabad: The Central government is upset with those agencies which are responsible for the infrastructure projects not providing the list of milestones and also the ones which are not reporting revised cost estimates and commissioning schedules. It is contemplating corrective measures to expedite the projects.

This is despite the fact that the Online Computerized Monitoring System (OCMS) of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation has been mandated to do that. The project authorities have been regularly requested to enter the list of milestones for each project for better monitoring, but many of them have not heeded to the request, official sources told Bizz Buzz.

Then there are delayed projects and the ones suffering cost overruns. The Centre suspects that there is underreporting in the figures in many cases, in both time and cost overruns. The administrative ministries concerned are likely to review these projects, officials said.

In May, out of the 1,568 central infrastructure projects costing 150 crore and above, 721projects were delayed and 108 projects reported additional delays vis-à-vis their date of completion reported in the previous month. While eight projects are ahead of the schedule, 270 are on schedule.

The total original cost of implementation of 1,568 projects was Rs2,159,802.67crore. Now, their completion cost is anticipated to be Rs2,654,818.05crore, which means the over cost overruns of Rs 495,015.38 crore or about 23 per cent of the original cost. Infrastructure is one of the areas Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focused on. He regularly instructs the stakeholders regarding delays and cost escalations. He has been interacting with the Chief Secretaries of States and UTs and Secretaries of the Ministries and Departments concerned through video conferences.

In a recent report, a pro-government think tank, the Public Policy Research Centre, has said that despite the pandemic, the government constructed 13,298 km of highways in 2021-22, with a record of 37 km per day in 2021, up from 11 km per day till May 2014.

"The Narendra Modi government set a Guinness World Record by constructing a 2.5 km 4-lane concrete road in 24 hours, as well as a 1-lane 25-km bitumen Solapur-Bijapur Road in 24 hours, and the most remarkable achievement was the pace of highway construction in the country that reached a new high of 37 km per day in the financial year 2020-21," report said.

The report is expectedly laudatory, but Modi's emphasis on infrastructure could not be overemphasized. For instance, in one single day, on June 20, he inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of a number of projects worth more than Rs27,000 crore in Karnataka.