Has the money approved for Dholera actually been spent?
Approved, paid in, or actually spent
A very large rupee figure gets quoted about Dholera constantly, and almost everyone quoting it thinks it means money spent. It does not. This page separates the money that has been approved, the money that has been paid into the company, and the money that has actually gone into building something, because those are three different numbers and only two of them are published.
Approval is not payment
The single most repeated number about Dholera is the approved value of its trunk infrastructure, meaning the main roads, water lines, drains and power network. It is quoted constantly as though it were money spent. It is not. It is a government sanction that allows money to be spent, which is the first of at least four separate stages, and the other three are reported in different places or not reported at all.
To make matters worse, the cash the central government paid into the company as share capital happens to be exactly the same figure to the paisa. Two entirely different events, one number. Anyone quoting it without saying which one they mean is, at best, being careless.
Six money figures that are routinely mistaken for one another
| What it is | Value | Unit | As at | What it actually means | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approved for trunk infrastructure | 2 784.83 | INR crore | 30.06.2026 | Permission to spend, granted by the central government. | dmu-latest.pdf, p1 |
| Cash paid in as share capital | 2 784.83 | INR crore | 30.06.2026 | Money placed inside the company. Not yet money spent. | dmu-latest.pdf, p1 |
| Charged to building work in the year | 22 795.09 | INR lakh | year to 31.03.2025 | One year only. No source publishes the total since the project began. | dicdl_ar25.pdf, p68 (printed p57) |
| Unfinished construction on the books | 27 955.14 | INR lakh | at 31.03.2025 | Cost of things started and not yet finished. | dicdl_ar25.pdf, p67 (printed p56) |
| Finished assets in use | 36 194.71 | INR lakh | at 31.03.2025 | Cost of things finished, less the wear written off. | dicdl_ar25.pdf, p67 (printed p56) |
| Contracted, not yet carried out | 34 108.71 | INR lakh | at 31.03.2025 | A future obligation disclosed in the notes. | dicdl_ar25.pdf, p101 (printed p90) |
Sources: Delivery Monitoring Unit proforma as on 30 June 2026 for the first two rows; DICDL annual report 2024-25 for the rest. Every row is a figure printed in one of those documents. Nothing on this page is added up across sources.
The number nobody publishes
What a reader actually wants is the total spent on building Dholera since work began. That figure does not exist in any document this site is built from. The dataset says so in its own words, and rather than paraphrase it, here it is.
EXPENDITURE RELEASED / SPENT: no expenditure-to-date figure for Dholera. Rs. 2,784.83 Crore appears twice, as (a) the value of APPROVED tender packages and (b) matching EQUITY RELEASED against land transfer. Neither is money spent on construction. Recorded as two distinct metrics with that distinction stated in each record's note.
Declared gap, Delivery Monitoring Unit dataset
You can get closer by adding the unfinished construction to the finished assets, because together they are roughly what the company has built and still owns. That is a reasonable way to think, and this site will not print the sum as a fact, because the company never printed it and the two lines are measured on different bases.
The individual figures are on unfinished construction, finished assets and the year's building charge.
Source: the declared limitations list of the Delivery Monitoring Unit dataset, quoted without edit.