Despite issues like delay in approvals, land acquisition and liquidity crunch posing challenges for the infrastructure sector, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on Monday said that projects completion in FY13 could go up by 39 per cent over the last year.

According to CMIE, the aggregate value of completed projects for FY13 is expected to rise to Rs 5.7 lakh crore compared to Rs 4.1 lakh crore in 2011-12.

Projects worth nearly Rs 8.9 lakh crore are scheduled to get completed during July 2012-March 2013, the leading economic think tank said in its monthly report.

“Even if half of these get completed on time, the total commissioning during FY13 will be the highest ever seen by the industry in a single year,” it said.

According to its statistics, 793 industrial and infrastructural projects worth Rs 2.2 lakh crore were scheduled for completion in the June quarter but only 124 projects entailing an investment of Rs 18,523 crore got completed on time.

“The delays seen in project completion in the June quarter are large in number but not so serious in nature.

These delays are normal. Most industrial and infrastructure projects end up missing their deadlines by at least a few months because of delays faced in land acquisition, obtaining government clearances, or other operational reason,” it said.

Incidentally, the total value of projects completed in the June quarter was healthy at Rs 79,807 crore.

“This is because 256 projects worth Rs 61,169 crore, which had not disclosed their completion schedule got commissioned in the June quarter. The total project completion during the quarter was 20.2 per cent higher that the year-ago level,” it said.