Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Monday said it has, for the first time, breached the 600 million tonne (MT)-mark in its production and off-take, clocking a 7 per cent and 4.8 per cent growth, respectively, during 2018-19 fiscal but missed the annual targets on both fronts marginally.
Ahead of summer, the miner, however, claimed there is "sufficient coal in the system" to meet the demand of the country.
Against a target of 610 MT in 2018-19, the Maharatna coal mining giant produced 607 MT coal, up by 7 per cent from 567.37 MT produced in the previous fiscal (2017-18).
"CIL scaled a new peak in production in the month of March 2019 producing 79.19 MT - the highest so far in a month since inception. In doing so, the PSU coal mining monolith clocked highest-ever production of 3.14 MT in a single day (as on March 25)," a company spokesperson said.
Coming close to its MoU target of 610 mt, coal supplies to the consuming sectors touched a new high at 608 MT during 2018-19, up by 4.8 per cent over previous year's off-take of 580.29 MT registering a growth of 4.8 per cent.
Coal behemoth recorded the highest-ever dispatch of 2.24 MT in a single day on the last day of the fiscal 2019.
With increase in volume terms being approximately 34 MT clocking a year-on-year growth of 7.4 per cent, the miner supplied 488 MT coal to country's thermal power plants during the fiscal under review, as against 454 MT dispatched to power sector in the previous fiscal.
Rake loading to power sector grew by a healthy 11.2 per cent during FY 2018-19. The CIL as a whole loaded 255.6 rakes a day on an average to power stations ending FY 2019 against 229.8 rakes per day for year ago period, the increase in absolute terms being 25.8 rakes/day.
Coal India claimed that the "synergy between Railway, Ministry of Coal and Ministry of Power resulted in overall rake loading evincing a growth of 5.6 per cent during FY 2019 as CIL on an average loaded 280.7 rakes/ day during the fiscal, against 265.8 rakes last fiscal. The increase in absolute number is 14.9 per day".
On the last day of the FY19, the miner had loaded a record 433 rakes in a day.
With increased supply of coal into the system, coal stocks at coal linkage-based power stations in the country swelled to 30.41 MT (as of March 28, 2019), which is 18 days' stock that is close to the mandated 22 days.
"At the end of FY 2019 not a single power station in the country is in critical or supercritical list of CEA for want of coal while end of last fiscal there were 28 power plants in critical mode," an official said.
Coal stocks at CIL's pitheads stands around comfortable 54 MT at the end of the fiscal of 2018-19.
With a total combined stock of 84.41 MT at power plants and pitheads put together there is sufficient coal in the system to meet the demand of the country, the miner added.
--IANS
bdc/nir
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