Centre awarded projects worth Rs 500 crore to Big Five consultants in 5 years: Report

As many as 16 central ministries and departments including petroleum, power, NITI Ayog and the Aadhaar project outsourced key projects worth Rs 500 crore to five top multinational consultancy firms in the last five years, records accessed by The Indian Express under the Right To Information Act have revealed.

The firms include the Big Four — PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Ernst & Young Global Limited and KPMG International Limited — and US-based McKinsey & Company, IE reported.

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As per the records cited by The Indian Express for the period between April 2017 and June 2022, the five firms bagged 308 consultancy assignments worth Rs 500 crore from various government ministries, departments and affiliated organisations.

The scope of the projects for the government ranged from “financial due diligence”, “retainer for advisory service”, “hiring technical consultants” to “evaluation of nominations for e-governance awards”, The Indian Express reported, citing records.

The 16 ministries and departments that consulted any of the five global consultants either directly or through 50 organisations under their ambit include Petroleum and Natural Gas; Rural Development; Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances; Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade; Coal; Electronics and Information Technology; Health and Family Welfare; Skill Development and Entrepreneurship; Defence; Civil Aviation; Public Enterprises; Non-conventional Energy Resources; Power; Road Transport and Highways; Environment, Forest and Climate Change; and Tourism.

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As per the records cited by The Indian Express, PwC emerged the biggest beneficiary, bagging 92 contracts worth Rs 156 crore between 2017 and 2022. PwC was followed by Deloitte with 59 assignments worth over Rs 130.13 crore. E&Y bagged as many as 87 contracts for Rs 88.05 crore, KPMG got 66 contracts worth Rs 68.46 crore while McKinsey received three contracts for Rs 50.09 crore, IE reported.

Among the central ministries and departments and their affiliated organisations, the petroleum sector topped the list with assignments worth over Rs 170 crore from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and four of its PSUs, the RTI data showed. Petroleum was followed by the Power ministry with records showing that nine organisations under its ambit outsourced assignments worth Rs 166.41 crore to multinational consultancies.

The Tourism Ministry handed projects worth Rs 18 crore to E&Y under its Swadesh Darshan initiative while the NITI Aayog outsourced seven assignments of Rs 17.43 crore during 2019-2021 for “evaluation of centrally sponsored schemes”, records cited by IE showed. Other projects included “nominations for awards for e-governance” given to KPMG by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) and the consultancy assignment for “revalidation of Enterprise Architecture” of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie in August 2020.