Project delays cost country Rs 1.6 lakh crore

The cost of 238 infrastructure projects, monitored by the statistics ministry, has overshot by Rs 1.6 lakh crore from their original estimates due to delays on account land acquisition forest clearances and other reasons, official data showed.

The statistics ministry is monitoring 1,071 infrastructure projects worth Rs 150 crore or above each in various sectors such as power, railways and road.

During February 2016, 238 out of of 1,071 projects reported cost overruns and 341 projects reported time delays.

“Total original cost of implementation of 1,071 projects was Rs 12.66 lakh crore and their anticipated completion cost is likely to be Rs 14.26 lakh crore, which reflects overall cost overruns of Rs 1.6 lakh crore (12.69 per cent of original cost),” the data by statistics ministry showed.

According to the data, expenditure incurred on these projects till Febru-ary 2016 was Rs 5,66,058.05 crore, which is 39.67 per cent of the anticipated cost of the projects.

However, compared to April 2015, the number of projects reporting cost overruns came down to 22.22 per cent in February 2016 from 30.47 per cent of total monitored projects last year. Projects reporting time overruns fell to 31.84 per cent in February this year from 42.61 per cent in April 2015.