How many of you people on here has ever managed a billion dollar program??
In the case above, on a 3 billion project, 20% contingency would be $ 600 million. Here, they are going over $ 550 million (still within 20%). So there is NO issue on here. In fact, a program this massive that's designed to be spread across an entire nation, with so much land routes, potential future natural issues (floods, earth quakes, material shortages, etc, etc) which will all cause work to be stopped on certain parts temporarily and happens to EVERY project, expect a $ 30% increase to majority of the project.
Here's how programs like these work. Just so everyone reading understands the mechanics. I see Indians doing propaganda and Pakistanis, as always playing defense without a need, as majority just don't know or care to understand how these things work. Before the Indian members bit*ch about these, take a look at your own project overruns, the ISRO, DRDO, the LEAST Combat Aircraft (LCA), acquisition of Rafale, ALL have cost over runs or time overruns and corruption involved. But they won't talk about those!!!!
Our Pakistani members will quickly raise the "corruption flag" quickly, out of paranoia and "conspiracy theories" than care to understand a very serious Mathematical and Scientific process that goes into these programs for estimation. And they won't care to realize that there are international auditing companies auditing ALL projects done by the government and any wrong doing will come out. But here's how a typical complex, international program works
1) Gov't of Pakistan needs to revise the CPEC "Project" to CPEC "Program". A Program has MANY projects in it. And these projects, due to their cost and size, are independent so the $ 46 billion was "allocated" for an entire program. What would be built out of that, would be many projects with independent budgets, etc.
2) When someone announces a program or a project, it is merely an "intent" or an "initiation". As no one knows how much it would cost. The definition of a "project" is a unique effort, resulting in producing a unique deliverable (road, plane, car, etc), which is a brand new end product. Which means, it will have its own budget.
3) At the time of initiating an investment, there is some "due diligence" that's done. In other words, I sign a contract with Mayor Joe in a City to build a highway with my investment. Some of my engineers and proposal experts write up the contract and use our previous projects as an example. Mayor Joe needs this completed in "X" amount of time and I have 2 months to complete my "estimates". We visit the site and check it out a few times. We see a lot of in-usable land, or mountains we'd have to cut through, etc, and to understand the entire real cost, it would take "x" months, which would push the project BEYOND its expected delivery date.
So we make exceptions and add assumptions to the contract that if there are 10 KM worth of mountain cutting, it would me "x" dollars, more than that, would be "y" dollars as we don't know. So with these "assumptions", the project moves forward WITH money added to the budget as a "contingency" (usually 20% of the cost of the project, to cover these "unknowns" which didn't exist before, or couldn't be estimated correctly like the additional mountain cutting example I provided above).
We start the project and re-did our estimates (now doing the work, called "actual") as we had more time beyond just an "intention", and by being on the ground, or being on the ground for another project, we learned there is 50 miles of the mountain cutting involved (just making up an example).
So in this case, we'll revise our estimates and will go talk to Mayor Joe. AS LONG AS, we don't go over the contingency, we should be good (contingency is 20% allocated JUST to meet these issues of "intentional estimates" vs. the actual estimates). This situation in this article represents a less than 20% SD and the contingency will cover it. Only a small amendment is needed by two sponsors. Nothing else as it would be a part of the contract to use the contingency if needed. In 98% of the small to medium projects, the contingency is used. On 100% big projects, the contingency is used.
These kind of programs only take place ONCE in a nation's history and set her up for success for centuries. Everything else is an add on project for later. Like Pakistan's GT Road was built by the British centuries ago, resulting in connecting an entire country. The CPEC program is MUCH bigger than that.
Read my post above. Instead of taking the bait, learn how these programs actually work. People you are responding to, have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of corruption inside their home country on EVERY project. But instead of bringing that out, they'll bit*ch about everything you guys are doing, and you guys will make stupid statements and will agree to stuff you should really learn before commenting!!
1) Indian contractors can NEVER build something within budget as everyone gets a share. I can write a million examples on here, take a look at DRDO, ISRO, Dams, Highway construction and other projects, your leaders "conveniently" go over by MANY hundred millions (Least Combat Aircraft sounds familiar as an example)??
2) PLEASE, don't compare the Indian infrastructure to what's being built here. The only comparison is either some highways around Delhi, or new construction in Bangalore. The remainder of India's infrastructure isn't at this level. Hell, you guys don't have a comparison to Pakistan's M1, M2 system, with the exception of a few recently built highways.
When this gets built here, you'll see it on youtube and pictures on PDF, it would be amazing to see. In fact, take a look at the first few projects like Metro-Bus, Orangle line, etc. You can clearly see the quality and the beauty emphasis on these projects.
@MadDog : I just saw your comment on the other post. Thought I'd tag you on here too.
@MastanKhan : Please see the thread and provide some "Car Salesman" opinion, I know you've seen all this work in the US
@Oscar: you've seen many such infrastructure projects in the US. Any insight on the topic?
. The people of Pakistan deserve a peaceful, growing, terrorism free country, filled with opportunity. Some people like you, should move out and go live in some other place where nothing will get improved. I have a list of countries where you might like it 
), not sure what and where I would be, if I was a citizen of some other country 
