340 Infrastructure Projects Show Cost Overruns Of Rs 3.3 Lakh Crore Over Delays, Other Reasons: MOSPI

According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) report for March 2019, about 340 infra projects costing above Rs 150 crore and more have shown cost overruns (unexpected incurred costs) of Rs 3.3 lakh crores.

“The total original cost of implementation of the 1405 projects was Rs 18,09,681.47 crore and their anticipated completion cost is likely to be Rs 21,39,924.38 crore, which reflects overall cost overruns of Rs 3,30,242.91 crore (18.25 percent of original cost) with Rs 8,53,680.47 crore expenditure brought on these projects till December,” said the report.

Out of 1,405 projects, 381 projects faced time escalation and 340 suffered budget overrun.

The average delay on these 381 projects was 43.12 months. 117 projects got delayed by 12 months, 103 projects were delayed by 25-60 months, 91 projects were delayed by 61 months and the rest 63 projects were delayed by a period of 13 to 24 months.

The Ministry Of Statistics and Programme Implementation plays an important role as an institution by keeping the data of such infra projects with their track records of completing on time and cost overruns.

The report shows issues like delays in land acquisition, forest clearance, the supply of equipment, fund constraints, geological surprises, geo-mining conditions, slow progress in civil world and shortage of labour are responsible for overrun of these projects which could have been completed long back.

These are not strange and surprising reasons as the same was reported in 2017’s infra projects overrun report by MOSPI.

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