The country’s overall coal production has remained stagnant despite Coal India’s output rising.

While Coal India’s production has grown 9.4 per cent in the April-August 2015 period, but core sector data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry show that the coal production index posted only 4.6 per cent growth in that period. This was because few private players have been able to start mining activity.

Data for coal production from private companies come with a two-month lag. During April-July 2015, the total coal production in the country was 186.9 million tonne of which Coal India and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd’s (SCCL) combined contribution was 174.363 million tonne.

The Coal Ministry has set a target of 1.6 billion tonne production by 2019-20 and aims to end India’s import dependency for the fuel. In the public sector mining is done by Coal India and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL), while mining activity in the private sector has stalled as only seven mines out of the 31 mines that have been auctioned in the year have started production till now.

The sluggish growth and the quality of coal being mined have meant India’s dependency on imports has grown this year.

Imports rise

According to the Indian Ports Association, India’s 12 major ports saw thermal coal imports growing by 22.66 per cent to 40.354 million tonne in April-August 2015 as compared to the same period last year. But for the power sector the situation is not alarming.

Piyush Goyal, Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy Minister, has said that availability of coal is no longer a problem for the power sector with majority of the units having more than 20 days of stock.

Besides, there has not been much demand for the fuel from the power sector as generation grew by just 3.08 per cent to 340,286.99 billion units during April-August 2015 over the same period last year.

Coal-based power plants operated at only 59.85 per cent plant load factor as compared to 64.57 per cent last year.

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