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Against a backdrop of widening demand-supply gap, India’s coal shortage may soar to 200 million tonnes by 2017 against 142 mt by 2012, the Planning Commission has said.
“By the terminal year of the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), the nation is likely to face coal deficit of about 200 mt,” an official with the Planning Commission told PTI.
The fossil-fuel demand for the terminal year of the next plan (2016-17) is projected at 1,000 mt against a production of 800 mt.
The official said the demand-supply gap in the last year of the present plan (2007-12) has been assessed at 142 mt with availability of only 554 mt against the requirement of 696 mt.
“Assessing the scenario, the Commission has fixed a lowered growth rate target for the next Plan period (12th Plan) to 7.5 per cent against 8.9 per cent of the current Plan, which too, is unlikely to be met,” the official said.
The Government, too, in March admitted that the nation will face a shortfall of 269 mt of coal by 2021-22 as the coal producing entities have failed to keep pace, with the demand as well as economic growth.
Also, with the controversy over “no go” and “go” areas classified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), a large number of projects for coal production are stranded for over a year.
Disallowing mining in 203 coal blocks falling under “no go” zone alone has impacted coal production to the tune of about 660 mt per annum, according to the Coal Ministry.
While the Government has already constituted a 12-member ministerial panel, headed by the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, to sort out issues hurting coal production, the Coal Ministry is of the opinion that even after clearances to the projects, it will take time to make up for the production loss.
Maharatna Coal India, which alone accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic production awaits clearance for its over 150 projects, stranded for green norms.
The world’s largest producer, which missed the production target in the last fiscal and could produce only about 431 mt, has fixed a target of producing 452 mt in the current fiscal.
CIL missed the production target in 2010-11 despite downscaling it to 440 mt from the earlier projection of 460 mt.
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