The shortfall in domestic coal production is likely to stand at 114 million tonnes in FY12, as against the earlier projection of 114 MT, due to the evacuation of stocks lying idle with state-run CIL, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said today.
"The gap (between coal demand and supply) in the current year is envisaged to be 142 MT. After taking into account 28 MT of coal liquidation from Coal India for supply to the power sector, it is envisaged to reduce to 114 MT," Jaiswal told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on coal.
Jaiswal, however, made it clear that stock liquidation by Coal India was subject to the availability of rakes and in case of a paucity of the same, the power sector will have to make arrangements for evacuation of the dry fuel.
"... Liquidation is subject to the availability of rakes and if the same is not feasible, the power sector needs to arrange evacuation of coal from pitheads of their own," he said.
The government has already asked Maharatna public sector coal miner CIL to liquidate stocks lying at pitheads to the maximum extent possible and Jaiswal, in a letter to the PSU's Chairman N C Jha, has asked to him to personally monitor the situation.
As of April 1, approximately 70 million tonnes (MT) of coal of CIL and its subsidiaries had accumulated at the pithead of various mines.
CIL had said the major reasons for accumulation of pithead stocks were law and order problems in Jharkhand and Orissa, constraints in transportation of coal from pitheads to railway sidings and lower availability of railway rakes in the third and fourth quarter last fiscal.
The Railways, however, have assured CIL that it will supply an adequate number of rakes.
Talking about the widening demand-supply deficit, Jaiswal said it shot up from about 50 MT in 2007-08 to 83 MT last fiscal.
Coal demand in the ongoing fiscal stands at 696 MT, as against the targeted production of 554 MT, he said.
As per the Planning Commission, domestic coal demand will increase to 1,000 MT by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17), necessitating about 200 MT of imports to bridge the shortfall in domestic output.
The production shortfall in the current fiscal, the final year of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12), is projected at 142 MT, with domestic output likely to amount to 554 MT.
The commission has also estimated that domestic production will rise to 770 MT by 2017 on the basis of projected annual growth of around 7 per cent in output.
Coal India is the world's largest producer of coal and accounts for over 85% of domestic production of the dry fuel.
In the last fiscal, it produced about 431 MT of coal, almost the same output it recorded in 2009-10.
