By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: The Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) , has sought the intervention of Union Coal Ministry and written a letter to the Pralhad Joshi led Ministry over Critical coal shortage for Non-Regulated Sector (NRS) and it requested for immediate resumption of coal supplies for economically viable and sustainable domestic industry operations.FIMI in a letter bearing no B/23/21-22/798 dated 6 October, to Anil Kumar Jain,Secretary, Ministry of Coal, stated that it appreciate the proactive measures and policy reforms taken by the Ministry of Coal amidst the unprecedented global pandemic situation and thereby supporting the Indian coal consuming industry enabling it to get through the challenging phase.
“However, despite untiring efforts of Ministry of Coal and Coal India Limited (CIL), the current acute coal crunch due to various factors has created an immensely precarious situation for coal consumers, mainly for the aluminium and steel industry falling under Non-Regulated Sector (NRS). This in turn has lead to significant curtailment of secured coal supplies adversely impacting the industry operations. Such a situation has brought down the industry to almost standstill and left with no time to devise any mitigation plan to continue sustainable operations. The operational Power Plants of Non-Regulated Sector are running at abysmally low critical coal stocks and forced to operate at much reduced power generation with huge risk of facing plant closure and threat of loss of huge employment and domestic value addition in the country. This situation has brought the CPP based industries and MSMEs almost to a grinding halt and the increased prices of finished products are further causing burden for the end consumers,’’ FIMI said.
The coal linkage auctions were envisaged to be held at six months’ interval to meet coal requirement. However, post Tranche IV (September 2018), no linkage auctions have been conducted for CPP sector during last three years. The exclusive e-auctions are not being conducted at regular intervals, and insufficient quantity of coal is being offered through Spot e-Auctions by Road mode. As a result, the premiums on the reserve price of coal in recent auctions have skyrocketed and making it unviable for the NRS coal consumers.Adding to the plight of coal consumers, the exponentially rising import coal prices have created a double whammy for the consumers, as the global coal prices have gone up exponentially and are on an upward trend while the ocean freight rates are also at all-time high. Therefore, even the import sourcing has become unviable under these circumstances to meet coal requirement due to deficit of indigenous coal supply, and is also not in line with the Government’s vision to make a ‘Self-Reliant India’ and ‘Make in India’, it said.
It said, in the backdrop of the above and to protect the domestic industry falling under Non-Regulated Sector, FIMI requested the Union Secretary to advise Coal India for taking the following remedial measures to overcome the precarious situation which has arisen due to restricted coal supplies and rakes :
i) Immediate resumption / increasing coal supply against secured linkages for sustainable industry operations.
ii) Expediting coal linkage auctions / exclusive e-auctions for NRS consumers through Rail mode at the earliest to provide some relief for the consumers.
iii) Rakes allocation on priority for CPP based industry for optimum coal materialization.
iv) Allocation of coal dispatches through rakes in proportion of 75% (power) and 25% (non-power), in line with Ministry of Coal circular dated 15th February, 2016 for auction linkage.
