e-trading in coal likely

The government will decide whether to adopt e-auction for coal after studying results of e-auctions conducted on trial basis by coal companies.

Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayan Rao today said e-auction was introduced because consumers of coal, who could not get linkage, were being forced to buy coal from the black market.

"By the year-end, we will come to know if e-auction is good," he said in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha. Rao admitted that certain power plants were facing difficulties because of coal shortage.

The reasons for such scarcity included unloading constraints which lead to congestion in rail movement, and "delayed release of payment" by plants for coal and railway freight. He said power stations "often consumed more coal than the quantity allocated by the standing linkage committee".

The minister said a total of 247,847 million tonne of coal resources up to a depth of 1,200 metre had been estimated in India, while the demand for coal by the end of the Tenth and Eleventh Plan had been assessed at 473.18 mt and 676 mt, respectively.