The Modi government will be starting an elaborate exercise next year to monitor the progress of nearly 1,700 big central infrastructure projects in order to help flag those, which may not be completed in time and have cost overruns, News18 has learnt.
This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been raising concern in various internal meetings over project delays and cost overruns. At the inauguration of the Saryu River Pariyojna in Uttar Pradesh last week, the PM had pointed out how the cost of the project had risen to Rs 10,000 crore from Rs 100 crore in the last 40 years.
In a reply to Parliament this month, the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry said the cost due to time overrun of 557 projects was Rs 2,76,971 crore. The Infrastructure and Project Monitoring Division (IPMD) in the Ministry is tracking 1,670 projects from 24 ministries and 11 sectors, each costing over Rs 150 crore.
The IPMD has now sought a study by an agency to augment its capacity to evaluate project monitoring “from the point of view of flagging in advance the Central Sector Projects, which may fall in time and cost overrun,” according to a document reviewed by News18. The expected time to start evaluation is February 2022 and the exercise will conclude with a full report by March 31, 2022.
This will involve “addition of new key infrastructure sector for performance monitoring including new performance indicators” and “flagging to ministries for appropriate remedial measures for meeting the pre-set targets and improving the growth rate” after a sectoral assessment and performance analysis by the subject experts of the infrastructure sector by finding gaps and removing the bottlenecks.
Other Improvements Planned
The IPMD currently prepares a monthly review report on the infrastructure performance of sectors such as power, coal, steel, railways, shipping and ports, fertilizers, petroleum and natural gas, civil aviation and roads and telecommunication. These reports will be studied as part of the exercise to add additional monitoring parameters “for bringing out the actual performance of infrastructure sectors,” the document says.
IPMD submits this report to Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Secretariat, Ministry of Finance, Niti Aayog and the concerned administrative ministries and a monthly “flash report” is also brought out in which the projects with time and cost overruns are flagged. An online portal is also maintained for monitoring. The planned exercise will also assess the effectiveness of this online monitoring portal run by the department and gear it up for “real time data monitoring.”
The exercise will involve a SWOT analysis for IPMD, review its present organisational structure, analyse requirements of external consultants required by IMPD and undertake consultations with external stakeholders such as Niti Aayog to gather outside-in view on expected role of IPMD. “Develop a case with objective assessment and reasoning to enhance the mandate of IPMD and to be submitted as a scheme for ministerial approval,” says the document on another aim.
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