PAIMANA (2025): Project Assessment, Infrastructure Monitoring And Analytics For Nation-building.

Policy Update
Shruti Chandra

Background

Infrastructure is a critical foundation for socio-economic growth, connectivity and public service delivery. However, the effectiveness of infrastructure investment depends not only on creating new assets but also on ensuring that large projects are implemented on time, within cost and with effective coordination.

Recognising this, India has increasingly adopted technology-enabled mechanisms for infrastructure planning, coordination and project implementation. Platforms such as PM GatiShakti facilitate integrated, GIS-based planning of infrastructure and multimodal connectivity, while PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation) enables high-level review of major projects and resolution of implementation bottlenecks. As infrastructure investment has expanded across sectors and involves multiple ministries and implementing agencies, the need has also grown for a centralised, standardised and data-driven system to continuously track project progress, expenditure, delays and performance.

Against this requirement, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) launched PAIMANA (Project Assessment, Infrastructure Monitoring and Analytics for Nation-building) on 25 September 2025, replacing the erstwhile OCMS-2006 (Online Computerized Monitoring System). The portal monitors ongoing Central Sector infrastructure projects costing ₹150 crore and above, bringing project-level information into a unified monitoring framework. Its implementation involves coordination among MoSPI, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), more than 20 Central Ministries/Departments and other Project Implementing Agencies.

Functioning

The PAIMANA Portal provides a Performance Monitoring Dashboard that enables data-driven assessment of infrastructure performance across key sectors.

1. Project-level Monitoring: The portal monitors ongoing Central Sector infrastructure projects costing ₹150 crore and above, tracking their implementation status through project-level information. The project-monitoring interface is now known as PAIMANA-PROJ, while the PAIMANA-CRIP (Central Repository of Infrastructure Projects) serves as the underlying data repository/input layer.

2. Integrated Data Collection:

Following the principle of “One Data, One Entry,” project information is collected through data entry as well as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). PAIMANA’s project-monitoring system was integrated with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s (DPIIT) Integrated Project Monitoring Portal (IPMP), enabling automatic data flow from Ministries, Departments and Project Implementing Agencies. With the subsequent launch of PAIMANA-CRIP (Central Repository of Infrastructure Projects) in July 2026, it is being developed as a central repository of infrastructure-project data.

3. Performance Monitoring Dashboard

The Performance Monitoring Dashboard, introduced in April 2026, complements project-level monitoring by assessing the performance of infrastructure sub-sectors through standardised indicators. The framework covers six sub-sectors: Power, Civil Aviation, Telecommunications, Railways, Roads, and Ports, Shipping & Waterways.

Table 1 : Perfomance Metric Dashboard

Sub-sector	Indicators
Civil Aviation	31
Roads	8
Power	14
Ports, Shipping & Waterways	62
Telecommunications	13
Railways	37
Total	165

Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, PIB, 16 July 2026.

Performance

The following performance figures are based on PIB data released on 10 August 2026, covering the status of projects as of June 2026.

1. Overall Project Portfolio

As of June 2026, 1,847 ongoing infrastructure projects were under monitoring across 17 Central Ministries and Departments, with a total revised cost of ₹40.54 lakh crore. Expenditure had reached ₹21.97 lakh crore, representing 54.18% of the revised cost, indicating substantial progress in project implementation.

2. Physical and Financial Progress

Of the monitored projects, 709 projects (approximately 39%) had achieved more than 80% physical progress, while 337 projects (approximately 19%) had crossed 80% financial completion, indicating that a significant proportion of projects were at advanced stages of implementation.

3. Sectoral and Project-size Profile

The Transport & Logistics sector accounted for the largest number of ongoing projects, with 1,341 projects worth ₹22.32 lakh crore, reflecting the emphasis on connectivity infrastructure.

By project size, the portfolio comprised 769 mega projects, each costing ₹1,000 crore or more, with a total value of ₹30.51 lakh crore, and 1,078 major projects, costing ₹150 crore to ₹1,000 crore, with a total value of ₹5.10 lakh crore.

4. Ministry/Department-wise Progress

The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways had the largest project portfolio, with 1,022 projects (55%) and a revised cost of ₹9.89 lakh crore (24%).
The Ministry of Railways accounted for 255 projects (14%), with a revised cost of ₹8.69 lakh crore (21%),
The Ministry of Coal accounted for 121 projects (7%), worth ₹2.22 lakh crore (6%).

Four other Ministries/Departments are also implementing a significant number of projects:

Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas: 105 projects with a revised cost of ₹4.33 lakh crore.
Ministry of Power: 98 projects with a revised cost of ₹5.71 lakh crore.
Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs: 50 projects with a revised cost of ₹3.65 lakh crore.
Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation: 40 projects with a revised cost of ₹2.04 lakh crore.

The remaining 156 projects (8%) account for a combined revised cost of ₹4.02 lakh crore (10%) and are distributed across various Ministries and Departments, including Higher Education, Civil Aviation, Steel, Telecommunications, Labour & Employment, Ports, Shipping & Waterways, Health & Family Welfare, Mines, DPIIT, and Sports.

Impact

Efficient Infrastructure Project Execution: Regular monitoring of physical and financial progress enables early identification of delays and implementation bottlenecks, facilitating timely intervention and reducing the risk of time and cost overruns in infrastructure projects.
Greater Fiscal Efficiency: By linking project expenditure with physical progress, PAIMANA can strengthen scrutiny of public capital expenditure and help identify projects where financial outlays are not translating proportionately into physical completion. This supports better value for public investment.
Enhanced Centre-State Coordination: Although PAIMANA focuses on Central Sector projects, its integrated project data can facilitate coordination between the Union and State Governments where infrastructure projects involve interdependent responsibilities, supporting more coherent planning and implementation.
Revamped Monitoring Approach: The Performance Monitoring Dashboard, launched in April 2026, broadened PAIMANA’s monitoring approach from sectoral output measurement to multidimensional infrastructure performance assessment. Drawing on the established MoSPI framework, it evaluates infrastructure across access, quality, fiscal cost and revenue, utilisation and affordability, enabling more comprehensive performance assessment and better-targeted policy interventions.
Responsive Project Governance: Regular performance updates, monthly review meetings and ministry-specific dashboards provide implementing agencies with timely access to project data and analytics. This facilitates continuous review, early identification of execution gaps and timely corrective action, strengthening accountability in project implementation.

Emerging issues

Despite its integrated architecture, PAIMANA’s effectiveness depends on the quality, timeliness and consistency of data supplied by multiple Ministries, Departments and Project Implementing Agencies. Differences in reporting practices, delayed updates and data discrepancies can affect the reliability of project-level monitoring and cross-sectoral comparisons.

Further, as infrastructure projects involve multiple agencies and, in several cases, interdependent Central and State-level components, inter-agency coordination and timely resolution of implementation bottlenecks remain important for translating monitoring findings into corrective action.

As PAIMANA integrates data from multiple government platforms through APIs, reducing the need for separate manual data entry, robust data governance still remains essential to maintain reliable monitoring.

Way forward

PAIMANA should move towards a single, standardised infrastructure data protocol across participating Ministries, with common definitions, reporting formats and automated validation checks to improve data quality and comparability.

Additionally, PAIMANA should evolve from tracking project status to tracking the effectiveness of monitoring interventions by recording the number of discrepancies, delays and bottlenecks identified, resolved and pending, along with the time taken for resolution. It should also monitor the extent to which corrective action accelerates project execution after an issue is flagged. Such feedback-based monitoring would help assess whether PAIMANA is translating data and analytics into tangible improvements in project implementation.

Further, the portal also faces technical and data-display issues, such as zero or incomplete values, delayed data refresh and inconsistencies between source systems and the dashboard. Such issues can affect real-time interpretation and require timely technical resolution and hence the technical aspects of the portal should be strengthened to address such glitches.

If these issues are addressed, PAIMANA can emerge as a key pillar of India’s broader vision of data-driven governance.

References

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. (2026, August 10). PAIMANA: Strengthening data-driven infrastructure governance. Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2296968&reg=48&lang=1

Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. (n.d.). PAIMANA: Infrastructure & Project Monitoring. https://paimana-proj.mospi.gov.in/

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. (2026, March 25). PAIMANA portal and management of major infrastructure projects. Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2244898&reg=3&lang=1

About The Contributor

Shruti Chandra is a Research & Editorial Intern at IMPRI.

Acknowledgement

Sincere gratitude is extended to the IMPRI team for their guidance and support and to the reviewers, Karnavi Shende and Ayana NK for their valuable feedback and reviews.