NELLORE: Around 75 central infrastructure projects with each costing over Rs. 150 crore are currently underway in Andhra Pradesh.
Minister of state (Independent charge) for planning, Rao Inderjit Singh, disclosed this while answering a question from Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
He said the projected cost of those projects was Rs 1.22 lakh crores and the anticipated cost is Rs 1.69 lakh crore.
On the reasons for cost escalation, the minister clarified time and cost overruns are project-specific, and depend on a variety of technical, financial and administrative factors, and differ from project to project.
However, the main reasons reportedly include under-estimation of original cost, changes in rates of foreign exchange and statutory duties, high cost of environmental safeguards and rehabilitation measures. The other reasons include spiraling land acquisition costs, shortage of skilled manpower; changes in project scope; monopolistic pricing by vendors of equipment services and inflation.
The minister said the delay in timely completion of the projects, law and order problems, delay in land acquisition, delay in environment and forest clearances, funding constraints, rehabilitation, and resettlement issues also escalate project costs.
He said they are setting up Central Sector Projects Coordination Committees (CSPCCs) in states for removal of bottlenecks and for facilitating speedy implementation of major projects.
