By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs Shri Pralhad Joshi in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Monday said that the demand of coal is higher than the current level of domestic supply of coal in the country. The gap between demand and domestic supply of coal cannot be bridged completely as there is insufficient availability and reserve of prime coking coal in the country.
Further, coal imported by power plants designed on imported coal and high grade coal required for blending purposes is also imported in the country as this cannot be fully substituted by domestic coal as the country has limited reserve of high grade coal. As per the current import policy, coal is kept under Open General License (OGL) and consumers are free to import coal from the source of their choice as per their contractual prices on payment of applicable duty. Government of India does not interfere in this matter.
The total actual demand of coal during 2020-21 was 906.13 Million Tones (MT). Out of which total coal import was 215.25 MT which was 23.75% of the total requirement
Coking coal mission has been launched for increase in the coking coal production from present 45 MT to 140 MT by 2029-30. This will help in reducing the import of coking coal as it can be blended with high grade imported prime coking coal for steel manufacturing.Latest technology e.g. Continuous Miner for underground mines, surface miner for opencast mines, latest HEMMs etc. are already in vogue for production of coal in the country.
Joshi said, Coal India Limited (CIL) has not stopped conducting of e-auction for any period during this fiscal. During this fiscal (till February’22) CIL has offered a quantity of 160.5 Million Tonne (MT) under various windows of e-auction, out of which a quantity of 100.1 MT has been allocated.
There is no shortage of coal at power plants and power plants are having coal stock of 26.398 MT as on 08.03.22. Moreover, CIL is having a pit-head stock of around 45 MT along with daily production of 2.5 MT/day. Some Power plants are not able to build sufficient coal stock due to payment issues.
