Hundreds of infrastructure tasks have been impacted by cost overrunsA overall of 438 tasks in the infrastructure sector, worth more than Rs 150 crore have been affected by cost overruns totalling Rs 4.34 lakh crores.According to a report on facilities jobs keeping an eye on, launched by the ministry of statistics and programme application (MOSPI) for the month of October 2021, out of the 1,680 such jobs, 438 faced cost overruns while 539 were delayed.The report pointed that the main reasons behind the delay in tasks ranged from state-wise lockdowns due to Coronavirus pandemic, hold-up land acquisition and getting forest and environment clearances.
Overall original expense of implementation of the 1,680 tasks was Rs 21,74,182.86 crore and their expected conclusion expense is most likely to be Rs 26,08,330.02 crore, which shows general cost overruns of Rs 4,34,147.16 crore (19.97 percent of original cost), the report said.It even more kept in mind that the expenditure on these tasks incurred till October 2021 was Rs 12,64,545.31 crore.
This, the report said, was 48 percent of the awaited cost of the projects.Apart from delay in jobs' completion, another fascinating truth which the report highlighted was that for 837 projects, neither the year of commissioning nor the tentative pregnancy duration has been reported.Out of the 539 delayed tasks, 98 have total hold-up in the range of 1-12 months, 109 have been delayed for 13-24 months, 211 for 25-60 months and 121 tasks have hold-ups of 61 months and above.The average time overrun in these 539 delayed tasks is 47.16 months.