The Hindu Business Line : Reform process in coal mining to gain momentum

Project details
The Union Ministry of Coal has allowed CIL to start developing at least nine large coal projects as early as possible.
Development of mines through outsourcing would help the company confine its direct investment to a low level.

Kolkata , Aug. 24

Reform process in the domestic coal mining sector is set to gain further momentum with a series of new coal projects planned to be developed by Coal India Ltd (CIL), by outsourcing nearly all mine preparation and coal extraction jobs to leading international and domestic companies in the coming months.

The Union Ministry of Coal has allowed CIL to start developing at least nine large coal projects as early as possible so that it can achieve the targeted production by 2011-12. In fact, these are part of a total 13 large projects, each costing more than Rs 100 crore, which have been approved by the Union Coal Ministry, while 10 more large projects are expected to get approval shortly.

The projects to be developed by outsourcing include the expansion of Rajmahal opencast (OC) in Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL), Ashoka OC and Megadh OC in Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL), Gevra, Dipka, Kusmunda in South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) and Bhubaneswari, Kulda and Kaniha in Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL).

Jobs such as overburden removal and coal extraction will be outsourced from private operators in almost all the projects, except Ashoka and Kusmunda where either the overburden removal or coal extraction only will be done privately.

A senior CIL executive said the development of mines through outsourcing would help the company confine its direct investment to a low level of about Rs 3,923 crore. He said if these projects were developed departmentally, CIL's own investment would come to over Rs 14,000 crore.

Meanwhile, the Central Mine Planning & Design Institute has prepared a total of 97 detailed project reports for CIL, which may be developed in the Tenth and Eleventh Plan period. Of the total projects, some 23 large ones each with an investment of over Rs 100 crore have been placed before the Ministry for approval.

A total of 25 projects with an investment of less than Rs 100 crore were placed before the CIL board and the balance 49 projects each with an investment of about Rs 50 crore were to be approved by the respective subsidiary of CIL.

It is learnt that the board has approved 19 projects, while the subsidiaries have cleared a total of 41 projects so far.

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