The government on Tuesday said the country is likely to import 194 million tonnes (MT) of coal in 2017, as against 135 MT at present, to meet the demand of the power sector.

“Current year, we have to import 135 MT of coal to meet our power sector requirement. The demand will increase further as we are setting up new power plants. It is expected that we will have to import 194 MT of coal in 2017,” Minister of State for Coal Mr Pratik Prakashbapu Patil said in a seminar.

The minister also said during the seminar organised by World Confederation Productivity Science (India) and World Academy of Productivity Science that with the passage of time, the country’s dependence on imported coal would not come down and would go up instead.

“There will be more dependency on imported coal. The dependency has increased from 6 per cent to 13 per cent in the last five to six years,” he said.

As per the Planning Commission, the demand-supply gap for coal in the ongoing year is likely to touch 142 MT, with domestic availability of only 554 MT against the requirement of 696 MT.

Earlier, the Plan Panel had also said the country’s coal demand will go up to 1,000 MT by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, necessitating about 200 MT of imports to bridge the shortfall in domestic output.

According to the Planning Commission, unless the widening demand-supply gap for coal was bridged, the projected shortfall of 200 MT would have to be met through imports.

The commission has estimated domestic coal production at 770 MT by 2017 on the basis of projected annual growth of around 7 per cent per cent in output.

As per a Planning Commission document, output in 2011-12 was expected to reach 680 MT, but the estimate was later scaled down to 630 MT in a mid-term appraisal by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

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