Check out this thread where we measure the elapsed time.
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/message/%3Cweb.59da2fc231ae2f125cafe28e0%40news.povray.org%3E/#%3Cweb.59da2fc231a
e2f125cafe28e0%40news.povray.org%3E
That's parsing time in the scene file.
You'll get the render time in the render statistics after the render completes.