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Ministry secretaries monitoring more than 40 ‘slow-going’ mega projects
A committee comprising around ten Secretaries to Ministries has been appointed to monitor the implementation of 42 mega projects which have shown less than 25 percent cumulative physical progress last year, authoritative sources said.
The high-level group is headed by Treasury Secretary R. H. S. Samaratunga and meets every week. It was appointed last month by the Prime Minister’s office to address bottlenecks, strengthen monitoring and prod the projects along.
A total of 83 mega-scale projects have achieved less than 25 percent of targeted physical progress and have not reached expected development targets as at December 31 last year, a review by the Finance Ministry’s Project Management and Monitoring Department (PMMD) has found. Of these, 42 mega-scale projects have not shown more than 25 percent of physical progress since they were started (cumulative) and are well behind schedule.
The Government had 1,398 development projects and programmes by the end of last year and approximately Rs 849bn was allocated for them through local and foreign funding. Around Rs 681bn of the total allocation was through the annual budget estimates for 1,280 projects while Rs 168bn was set aside for 118 projects through sources such as generated funds of respective institutions and direct loans obtained by implementing agencies, a PMMD report said.
In terms of agreed financial progress, too, the PMMD pointed out that 106 projects (or 21 percent of the total number of projects) had failed to achieve at least 25 percent. And only 773 projects (55 percent) achieved more than 75 percent of targeted physical progress.
Of the total number of projects, 221 or 16 percent showed less than 25 percent of physical progress while 42–those that are now under the scrutiny of the committee–haven’t shown much movement since they were launched. These matters “call for serious attention to avoid a similar situation in implementation of development projects next year,” the PMMD warns.
One of the main reasons cited by project proponents for this lag is delay in approvals and in required third party intervention as well as management issues. This is followed by procurement-related issues and obstacles at the start-up of the projects. Also given are “unexpected situation, technical issues, public protests and reasons beyond control”; delay in release of imprests; weakness in the performance of contractors; scope changes, revision of total cost estimates, halt or temporary suspension of projects; and issues with land acquisition and compensation.
Significantly, 50 large-scale projects have reported cost increases last year while 13 have reported cost reductions from the original agreed estimates. The variations were the result of changes in project scope and design.
The number of projects that have obtained extensions over inability to be completed on time is 254. The issues they have faced include procurement delays, inefficiency and poor cash-flow of contractors and land acquisition challenges. Of these, 137 are mega projects.
Also last year, 119 projects fully completed their activities while another 157 projects have finished their physical activities and are awaiting financial closure.
“Overall assessment of progress reveals that projects which have been implemented through sources other than the Treasury funds have recorded lesser performance than the projects funded through the Budget Estimates of 2018,” PMMD states. “One of the main facts reflected through the analysis of reported data is that targets of most of the projects are not realistic.”
“Therefore, high level of attention is called to this aspect at the planning stage of projects,” it advises.
Sri Lanka has no national database to monitor development projects including location, investment, achievements and outcomes. Information has to be harvested from each ministry and last year there was considerable delay owing to the political problems that crippled the Government from late October to early December.
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