The Hindu Business Line : Govt rules out hike in coal prices this fiscal

New Delhi, Aug. 12 The Government on Tuesday ruled out increase in coal prices during the current financial year, while stating that its emphasis was on supplying affordable coal to everyone who genuinely needed it.

“We have also decided to cut the premium on the floor price for e-auctions to zero from five per cent,” said the Minister of State for Coal, Mr Santosh Bagrodia.

The Minister was addressing newspersons after a review meeting of production and dispatch performance of coal companies.

This performance review was primarily aimed at taking stock of present production trends and various initiatives and strategies initiated by coal companies to meet the demand for coal, both in the short-term and long-term.

Supply to power sector

On meeting the requirements of the power sector, Mr Bagrodia said coal is being supplied to regulated power utilities, whose present installed capacity is about 68,950 MW. The overall supply to power sector from Coal India Ltd (CIL) has shown a growth of 3.4 per cent during April-July 2008 over the corresponding period last year.

Overall, both CIL and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd have achieved 98.7 per cent of AAP dispatch targets to power sector utilities.

“In the case of National Thermal Power Corporation plants, which are operating at relatively high Plant Load Factor (PLF), CIL has achieved 106 per cent of dispatch target up to July 2008,” he said.

Despite severe constraints in some of the coal companies on account of unprecedented rains, frequent law and order problems, transport bottlenecks and so on, there has been a 6.4 per cent growth in coal production in CIL during April-July 2008 compared with the corresponding period last year.

Moreover, coal companies are also carrying vendible coal stock of about 36 million tonnes (mt) even after liquidating 11.5 mt of stocks in the last four months.