Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003 |
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Industry & Economy
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Coal Eastern Coalfields likely to come out of BIFR net — Outsourcing production to bring revenues Badal Sanyal
Kolkata, Sept. 22 EASTERN Coalfields Ltd (ECL), a loss-making subsidiary of Coal India Ltd (CIL), which was referred to the Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) in 1998, is expected to come out of BIFR soon as a sequel to almost all the Central trade unions operating in this company allowing the management to outsource coal production from its small but scattered opencast mine patches. The ECL management has targeted an output of about 26 million tonnes (mt) of high-grade non-coking coal, which is expected to generate additional revenue of about Rs 1,624 crore. According to Mr M.K. Sinha, the Chairman and Managing Director of ECL, the outsourcing of coal would help the cash starved company not only to come out of BIFR but also would help in increasing the overall production from 27.18 mt during 2002-03 to about 42 mt in the year 2011-12. Talking to Business Line here, Mr Sinha said that additional revenue generated from outsourcing would help the company to implement all the Tenth Plan projects as well as replacing the surveyed off equipment of profit-making existing large mines such as Rajmahal, Sonepur Bazari and Jhanjra. A portion of additional revenue would also be utilised for implementation of the developmental activities at underground mines, which are essential not only for maintaining the production but also for increasing the output. Moreover, Mr Sinha said, the increase in production due to implementation of the Tenth Plan projects and also from outsourcing would help to meet the demand of large number of coal-based industries such as sponge iron plans that have come up in Asansol-Durgapur industrial belt in West Bengal. He said that outsourcing of coal was likely to provide new employment to thousands of people directly and indirectly at coal patches as well as at coal-based industries, notwithstanding providing additional revenue to the State Governments in the form of cess or royalty and in the form taxes from the coal-based industries. Such outsourcing would also help the economic condition of Eastern Railways by improving utilisation of wagons, he felt. Mr Sinha said that the ECL board had approved an investment proposal of about Rs 1,475 crore on projects to be taken up during the Tenth Plan. The projects, once completed, would add to the company an additional capacity of 12.7 mt. He explained that the Rajmahal opencast mine would be expanded from the existing capacity of 10.5 mt to 17 mt per annum with a total investment of about Rs 663 crore, while the greenfield Chuperbhita opencast project would be opened having a capacity of four mt per annum, entailing an investment of about Rs 606 crore. For improving the production and productivity of underground mines, "continuous miner with shuttle cars" would be introduced at Jhanjra, Sarpi and Khottadih underground mines with a total investment of about Rs 204 crore. It would provide an additional production capacity of 1.2 mt per annum. In addition to the "continuous miner", for increasing production at Jhanjra underground project, high capacity longwall powered equipment with a capacity of 1.5 mt per annum was likely to be installed under Indo-Russian bilateral agreement. The project report for Jhanjra is likely to be placed at the next ECL board meeting scheduled to be held on October 1.
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