| Dasari Narayan Rao, central minister of state for coal and mines, said on the sidelines of International Mining and Machinery Exhibition (IMME 2004), that a committee had been constituted to formulate 'Vision Document 2030'. |
| Industry experts were in the committee and the report would be submitted in three months. |
| Some of the issues that would be addressed in the report were easing the demand supply gap in coal. |
| The projected gap at the end of the Tenth Plan was 55 million tonne. At the end of Eleventh Plan, it was expected to be 95 million tonne. Rao said new projects would have to be taken up. |
| The committee would report on the issue of re-organisation of Coal India. Rao admitted the frequent change in ministers of coal and mines ministry was a stumbling block. |
| He said the ministry has initiated a single window clearance systems. |
| Project applications which had been pending for long would be processed and cleared, he promised. |
| Rao said the ministry was awaiting Cabinet approval for the purpose. |
| Earlier in the day, at the inauguration of IMME 2004, chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya said West Bengal had decided to dereserve some of its coal mines. |
| He invited private sector investors to develop the mines. |
| He pointed out that coal accounted for 90 per cent of West Bengal's total mineral production. |
| B Muthuraman, chairman of the eastern regional chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said the mining industry had to learn to leverage its strengths like low cost structure and abundant mineral reserves to increase domestic production and capture global market share. |
| "If leveraged properly, the natural resources can transform the eastern region into a metal and minerals hub" said Muthuraman. |
| He urged the government at Centre and states to provide appropriate incentives for private sector participation in mining exploration growth and value addition. |
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