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The outstanding dues of the power sector for the coal supplied by the mining PSUs stood at ₹17,395.15 crore as of November 2022, of which the majority is owed to Coal India Ltd (CIL).
According to Coal Ministry data, power-generating companies owed ₹14,631.15 crore to the mining behemoth, while ₹2,764 crore were the outstanding dues of Singareni Collieries Company (SCCL).
For CIL, the outstanding dues on a month-on-month basis were higher by 7 per cent from ₹13,722.31 crore in October 2022. October was the third consecutive month of decline in the outstanding dues of the power sector to CIL. The company’s average cost of production is around ₹1,310.88 per tonne.
At the end of January 2022, the dues stood at ₹15,097.01 crore, which fell consecutively during February to ₹15,037.32 crore and then to ₹12,272.41 crore in March this year.
With the peak electricity demand season beginning in April, which this year was also marked by an unusually high uptick in temperatures, the power sector dues started inching up at ₹12,819.09 crore during the month.
The dues started inching up during May (₹13,825.20 crore), June (₹15,252.20 crore) and hit the highest so far in 2022 during July at ₹15,824.14 crore. The outstanding to CIL started to decline from August (₹15,143.31 crore) and continued their northward journey during the next two consecutive months.
Production & consumption
In FY23 (April to October), the coal consumption in coal-based power plants has increased to 447.6 million tonnes (MT) as compared to 398.2 MT during the same period of last year with a growth of 12 per cent.
The demand for coal has increased from 906.13 MT in FY21 to 1,027.92 MT in FY22 at a growth of 13.44 per cent. The requirement of coal for FY23 has been projected at 1,087 MT which is 5.75 per cent higher than the actual demand in FY22.
The all-India coal production in FY22 was 778.19 MT in comparison to 716.083 MT in FY21. Further, in the current financial year up to November 2022, the country produced around 524.2 MT of coal as compared to about 448.1 MT in the year-ago period with a growth of about 17 per cent.
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