Delayed projects may be dumped

Backlogged projects being reviewed to finalise a list of those that can be dropped.

Dozens of infrastructure projects that have witnessed severe time delays, cost-escalation and have not been implemented may no longer see the light of day.

The government may decide to junk them completely and clean up the balance sheet. Various central ministries and departments are learnt to be conducting a review of such backlogged projects and will soon finalise a list of those that can be dropped.

As per government statistics published over a year ago, there were 605 central projects with an anticipated cost of Rs 2,67,815 crore under implementation.

Of these, 22 projects were proceeding ahead of schedule at that stage, 140 were on schedule, 250 behind schedule and 149 projects had not even been assigned a definite date of commissioning.

During 2004-05, 267 projects were scheduled to be completed. Against this, 48 projects costing Rs 23,506 crore were completed. Of these, 11 projects were completed on schedule and 37 projects were completed with some delay.

Sources told Business Standard that the review exercise had been initiated at the highest level. The main aim is to weed out those projects that cannot be implemented and are not needed in the changed circumstances.

"There may be hundreds of such projects that are currently on the shelf. Many of these do not even have detailed project reports and even the feasibility studies are outdated. These can be junked and the stable cleaned," officials said.

On the face of it, this exercise will result in some free space in office cupboards. A more substantial benefit could be the redeployment of any manpower attached to a project, better and streamlined functioning and greater accountability.

According to an analysis carried out by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the factors that contributed to the delays (in departments like the railways) include fund constraints, land acquisition, delays in awarding contracts, supply of equipment and civil works, legal wrangles including law and order problems.

The other issues include high cost of environmental safeguards and rehabilitation measures, higher cost of land acquisition, change in the scope of the project and under-estimation of original cost.

Several other reasons have also been put forth for the delays. These include lack of supporting infrastructure facilities, delay in finalisation of detailed engineering works, changes in scope, uncertainty in feed stock supply, pre-commissioning hurdles, technology related problems and geological surprises.