According to the Flash Report for January 2024 of the 1,821 Central Sector Infrastructure Projects costing 150 crore and above, 780 projects are facing delays in execution.
As per the report, a total of 780 projects are delayed with respect to their original schedules and 189 projects have reported additional delays vis-à-vis their date of completion reported in the previous month. Of these189 projects, 42 are Mega Projects costing Rs 1,000 crore and above.
On the positive note 22 new projects (14 projects in Roadways, 4 projects in Petroleum, 2 in Coal and 1 each in Steel, and Health & Family Welfare sectors) were added to the list of monitored projects and 13 were excluded following their completion.
Total original cost of implementation of the 1,821 projects was Rs 26,09,679.38 crore and their anticipated completion cost is likely to be Rs 30,90,135.99 crore, which reflects overall cost overruns of Rs 4,80,456.61 crore (18.41 percent of original cost). The expenditure incurred on these projects till January 2024 is Rs 16,43,821.69 crore which is 53.20 percent of the anticipated cost of the projects.
Out of the 1,821 projects, 51 projects are ahead of schedule, 617 are on schedule, 780 are delayed, 431 projects reported cost overrun and 255 projects reported both time and cost overrun with respect to their original project implementation schedules. However, the number of delayed projects decreases to 583 if delay is calculated on the basis of latest schedule of completion. Further, for 373 projects neither the year of commissioning nor the tentative gestation period has been reported.
Out of 780 delayed projects, 194 (25 percent) projects are facing delays in the range of 1 to 12 months, 187 (24 percent) projects are delayed in the range of 13 to 24 months, 284 (36 percent) have delays in the range of 35 to 60 months and the balance 115 (15 percent) projects have delay of more than 60 months.
The Online Computerized Monitoring System (OCMS) of this Ministry envisages monitoring of milestones of the various infrastructure projects. The project authorities have been regularly requested to enter the list of milestones for each project, to facilitate better monitoring. However, not all the project
agencies are reporting/providing the list of milestones. It has also been observed that project agencies are not reporting revised cost estimates and
commissioning schedules for many projects, which suggests that time/cost overrun figures may be under-reported.
