Kolkata: Amid concerns that Coal India Ltd (CIL) may fall short of its 660 million tonne (MT) production target for the current fiscal, the miner has planned to ramp up daily output to meet the goal, officials said Sunday.
Till December, the miner is expected to produce close to 390MT of coal and will require another 270MT in the last quarter of this fiscal to meet the annual production target.
Currently, Coal India produces 1.8MT per day while the asking rate to achieve the target is 2.9MT, the officials informed.
Internally, CIL has planned to raise its production to 3.00MT per day at least in February and March next year to inch closer to the target, the officials said.
According to the provisional data available, the miner produced 330.38MT of coal during April-November in the 2019-20 fiscal, down by 7.8 per cent from 358.30MT in the year-ago period.
Unless the miner increases its daily production to 2.50MT per day from January to March period, it will struggle to surpass the production figure of the last fiscal, company sources said.
Coal India’s offtake at 363.63MT during April-November period was down by 7.2per cent from 392.02MT supplied in the year-ago period.
CIL officials said the coal offtake was at 410 MT till December 27, 2019 as against a target of 467 MT.
In October, a rating agency had projected that the coal behemoth might miss the production target by 50-75MT in the current fiscal.
Performance of Coal India’s two key subsidiaries – Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) – will be crucial in remaining three months of the current fiscal to meet its production target, the officials said.
Mining activities in the two subsidiaries had been hit severely during monsoon and also due to law and order issues, they said.
According to production data, both SECL and MCL registered a negative growth of 14.5 and 9.8 per cent respectively as on December 27, 2019, a CIL official said, adding that these companies have been taking all measures to overcome hurdles and ramp up production.
CIL, however, is apprehensive about coal demand with declining electricity generation of thermal power plants in the country till November this year. “If the current trend continues, it will have an adverse impact on CIL’s production and dispatch,” the officials pointed out.
PTI