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Western Coalfields
Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL), a subsidiary of Coal India, has projected flat coal production at 69 million tonne in FY'25, mirroring last year's output, as it grapples with operational and pricing challenges. Despite achieving its highest-ever coal production of 69.113 million tonne in FY24, reflecting a 7.5 per cent growth, WCL anticipates no growth this fiscal or the next due to limited reserves, adverse geo-mining conditions, and escalating production costs, a top company official said. "Our total production for FY'25 will remain around 69 million tonne, similar to last year. Despite our best efforts, we expect production to remain flat next fiscal as well due to unique mining and pricing challenges," WCL Chairman and Managing Director Jai Prakash Dwivedi said. The Nagpur-headquartered company operates 52 mines, including 19 underground and 33 open-cast mines, across 10 areas in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. WCL produced 45.1 million tonne of coal between April and December, .
Union coal secretary Anil Kumar Jain on Tuesday said that thermal power stations have coal stocks that will last for the next 17 days and Mahagenco has stocks for eight to 10 days. Jain addressed a press conference along with Coal India Ltd (CIL) chairman Pramod Agrawal at the Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) during their visit to Nagpur. A major decision has been taken with regards to the pension scheme of coal mine workers, Jain said. The CIL gives Rs 10 per tonne of coal production towards pension scheme to coal mine workers, and likewise, the CIL gave approximately Rs 622 crore towards pension scheme out of the total production of 622 million tonnes last year, he said. As private coal companies were not contributing this way, the coal ministry was planning to a make a law wherein such firms will have to contribute around Rs 20 per tonne coal towards pension fund, Jain said. Speaking about the coal supply to Mahagenco and other power companies, Jain said the WCL was supposed to