In a significant development, the Centre, through the Union Jal Shakti Ministry, has indicated that the cost of the Polavaram project is ₹55,548.87 crore (at 2017-18 price level) in its annual statement and has stated that additional funds will be released by Nabard.

The State had been making a request to hike the project cost, citing increase in project implementation cost.

The Polavaram project, now under implementation in Andhra Pradesh, is set to soon get ₹2,234 crore as project cost from the Centre for 2020-2021.

This amount will be released by Nabard as a part of overall funding from the Centre. The Polavaram Irrigation Project was declared as a National Project under Section 90 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, which came into force on March 1, 2014. The project with a 2,454 m earth-cum-rockfill dam and a 1,128.4 m long spillway aims to irrigate 2.91 lakh ha in East Godavari, Visakhapatnam, West Godavari and Krishna districts besides paving way for several other benefits.

The Central Government is funding 100% of the remaining cost of the irrigation component of the project. As on April 1, 2014, the Government of Andhra Pradesh is executing the irrigation component of the project on behalf of Government of India. The Centre’s approved cost of ₹₹55,548.87 crore (at 2017-18 price level) comes as a major boost for the project implementation.

After declaration as National Project, ₹8,614.16 crore has been released for the execution of the project so far. Of this, ₹1,850 crore has been released since January 2020.

In addition, ₹2,234 crore has been sanctioned for release during 2020-21, which shall be disbursed by Nabard shortly. An expenditure of ₹17,327 crore has been incurred for the project works as of March 31, 2020, according to a statement.

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