The Pakistan government is likely to revise the cost of development schemes upward due to increase in the prices of cement, steel and other inputs, a senior government official told the Daily Times on Saturday. He said the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and the National Highway Authority (NHA) had been asked to submit their reports to the Planning and Development Division (P&D) with their findings about the real impact of the rise in input cost on the overall projects’ costs. WAPDA and the NHA informed the ministry of finance and the P&D that increase in the prices of inputs such as cement, steel and bitumen was impacting the overall costs of their projects, which were underway under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) allocation.

Cement prices registered an increase of around Rs 50 per bag in the past two months or so. If we compared the cement prices with level some two years back, they went up by over 100 percent. These changes have really confronted the projects executing agencies in real trouble for the contractors in most cases demand extra money due to this increase. Several projects got delayed for the contractors abandoned the work while expecting no financial benefit after completion of the projects.