PM Gati Shakti plan commenced, ministries to seek funds for projects: Rao Inderjit Singh

The government has commenced implementation of the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan and the concerned line ministries or departments will seek funding of their respective infrastructure projects serving the economic zones as per procedures laid under their respective schemes, minister of state for planning Rao Inderjit Singh said.

PM Gati Shakti Yojana is an integrated plan depicting the economic zones and the multimodal connectivity infrastructure with an objective to holistically integrate the interventions of 19 ministries or departments associated with the plan to address missing gaps and ensure seamless movement of people, goods and services, the minister said in response to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Delayed Projects

The infrastructure and project monitoring division of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation has identified 438 projects out of 1680 central sector infrastructure projects being monitored that have seen cost overrun, minister of state for planning Rao Inderjit Singh said in response to a separate question in Lok Sabha.

“The reasons for cost overruns are project-specific and depend on a variety of technical, financial and administrative factors,” he said.

According to the minister, some important reasons are under-estimation of original cost, changes in rates of foreign exchange, statutory duties, high cost of environmental safeguards and rehabilitation measures, spiraling land acquisition costs, shortage of skilled manpower, changes in project scope, monopolistic pricing by vendors of equipment services and general price rise or inflation.

However, the government has taken various measures to complete such projects including the periodic review of projects under PRAGATI, rigorous project appraisal, on-line computerised monitoring system (OCMS) for better monitoring, and setting up of revised cost committees for fixation of responsibility for time and cost overruns while setting up of central sector projects coordination committees (CSPCCs) in the states under the chief secretaries to remove bottlenecks and facilitate the speedy implementation of major projects, he said.