Just over one-in-ten of the shovel ready infrastructure projects approved by government in 2020 have been completed.
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The latest government report indicates 27 shovel-ready projects had been completed by the end of the third quarter of 2021, with a total spend of $524.9 million.
The government had committed to spending nearly $2.5 billion on 230 co-funded public and private sector projects valued at an estimated $4.18b, with the majority to be completed over the next three years.
Most of the money had been spent on community projects ($128.4m) in the third quarter, followed by transport ($52.3m), housing ($38.5m), services ($24.1m) and the environment ($15.1m).
Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson said the Infrastructure Reference Group (IRG) programme was on track, despite an ongoing skills shortage and supply chain constraints.
"Ninety-nine percent of projects are now approved and contracted, and 87 percent have started," Robertson said.
"The projects are being built by private sector firms and as we know the construction sector is reporting some issues with supply chain and skills shortages."
Civil Contractors Federation chief executive Allan Pollard said there were 185 projects underway.
However, he said most of the shovel-ready projects were relatively short-term and more work was needed to get a commitment on longer-term infrastructure projects.
"The key now is to obviously keep those going and bring them to a conclusion but also to have a really pipeline of more longer-term projects even beyond the shovel ready projects to give the industry confidence there is a much longer and I'm talking decades longer pipeline of work in place."
Pollard said another challenge was to continue to ease the skills shortage through training and investment, as well as dealing with the supply chain constraints.
"But we've got to be optimistic that there is a desire to invest and grow and there's a recognition that infrastructural development is going to be a key part of our post-Covid recovery. And I think you'll see that right across the political spectrum," he said.