Comments
State-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) has reported a marginal 0.1 per cent growth in coal production at around 136.96 million tonne (MT) during the April-June 2019 period, as against 136.85 MT in the same period last year.
However, the coal offtake witnessed a marginal dip by around 0.1 per cent to 153.29 MT during April-June 2019, as against 153.47 during the year-ago period, according to data put out by the company.
Coal production increased by around 0.5 per cent in June 2019 to 45.08 mt, compared with 44.87 MT in the same period last year.
Offtake was down by nearly 1.6 per cent to 48.86 mt in June this year as compared to the year-ago period.
It is to be noted that CIL had registered a 15 per cent growth in coal production during the first quarter of FY19, as compared with the same period of FY18.
However, the growth has been only marginal this year.
The state-owned miner registered a 7 per cent growth in production at 606.89 MT in 2018-19. It had achieved nearly 22 per cent of its total production in the April-June 2018 quarter.
As per its MoU with the Coal Ministry, the company is envisaging a 8.5 per cent growth in production at around 660 MT this fiscal.
The sluggish production growth in the first quarter is primarily believed to be on account of a slowdown in overburden removal (OBR), due to the delay in finalisation of contracts.
OBR, which refers to the removal of topsoil to expose the coal seams and extract minerals, is an important process in coal mining, particularly in India, which essentially has opencast mines.
More than 90 per cent of Coal India’s production comes from opencast mines, and therefore, any slowdown in OBR affects the production growth, as new seams may not be exposed.
This apart, land- and other weather-related issues are believed to have impacted the production.
The company’s subsidiaries -- SECL and BCCL -- have registered a 14.1 per cent and 15.8 per cent decline in production at 34.33 MT and 6.46 MT, respectively. Among its other units, ECL recorded a 5 per cent growth to 11.54 MT, NCL saw a nearly 7 per cent growth in production at around 26.22 MT, WCL witnessed 23.5 per cent growth to 11.91 MT, and MCL a 7.2 per cent growth to 34.78 MT during the April-June period.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.