Coal production hampered, but no plan to scale down CIL production target: Anil Swarup

Despite incessant downpour hampering coal production, the government said on Tuesday there were no plans to scale down state-owned CIL's output target for the ongoing fiscal as the demand has started picking up. "There is no move to scale down Coal India production target. I had a discussion with Coal India (CIL) people. They would make it up by 31st of March. This year there has been unusual rains," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup told reporters here.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a conference organised by the World Coal Association on sustainable energy development. He said there were no plans to cut down output because the demand has already picked up now. In October, the demand has started picking up for both coal and power sectors, the secretary said. "We started (the fiscal) with the pithead stock of 56 million tonnes (MT) it has come down to around 40 MT. We have already come down quite dramatically. It was in a way good that not much production happended...God has been kind. Because had we continued to produce that much we would have had that much of stockpile we had produced," he said.

Coal India which accounts for over 80% of the domestic coal production is eyeing 598 MT of production in 2016-17. The secretary further said that there will be an output of around 50-60 MT from the private mines in this fiscal. Coal India has a target to produce one billion tonnes of fossil fuel by 2020.

With the supply of coal being affected due to excessive rains, the government had said last month that contingency plan has been drawn up to overcome the hurdles in dispatch of supply to NTPC's thermal power plants, including Rihand and Vindhayachal.