CIL seeks more railway rakes as inventory touches 70MT

Worried over soaring stockpile which has touched the all-time high of 70 million tonnes, Coal India today said it plans to evacuate 25 million tonnes of coal from inventory this fiscal and has sought adequate rakes from the Railways for the purpose.

The stock has been accumulating over a decade on account of inadequate transportation facilities, mainly due to shortage of railway rakes.

"Accumulating stock on pitheads has been a serious concern for us as it has reached 69.5 million tonnes (MT). We have fixed an internal target to liquidate 25 MT of coal this fiscal," Coal India (CIL) Chairman and Managing Director NC Jha told PTI.

For this Coal India has sought adequate number of rakes from the Ministry of Railways, Jha said.

"CIL which on an average requires 190 rakes per day has got 177.4 rakes a day in April, 162.1 in May and 160.2 per day in June. In the current month so far the average rakes availability is 165 per day which is inadequate," he said.

The average rakes availability in 2010-11 was 161 rakes a day as against the requirement of 190 per day while in 2009-10 it stood at 156.8 rakes a day on an average.

"In comparison to last year there has been a growth of 6% in average rakes availability. But actually we require a growth of 9%," Jha said.

The state-run mining giant had entered into an agreement with the Coal Ministry for offtake of 2 MT from the stockpile besides dispatch of proposed 452 MT, the production target for the current fiscal.

The public sector firm could dispatch only 424 MT of coal last fiscal though it mined 431 MT.

Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal in June had assured the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Coal to sort out issues hurting dry-fuel production and to reduce stockpile from 70 MT to 42 MT by March 2012.

CIL, which accounts for over 82% of domestic production, has been facing problems of coal evacuation due to the shortage of railway rakes.

Earlier, the firm had proposed to assist the Railways in arranging finances for purchase of rakes to speed up coal transportation.

Jha said the Railways had rejected its offer stating that "their (Railways) policy does not permit them to accept financial help from Coal India."