The government today said efforts are being made to increase the availability of indigenous coking coal in the country in order to reduce the import of the fossil fuel which is mainly used in production of steel.
This follows industry body Assocham recently stating that India needs to emphasise on indigenous production of coking coal in order to reduce the dry fuel import which has resulted in loss of forex reserves.
"We are making efforts to increase the availability of indigenous coking coal as a lot of it is currently being imported," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said.
"We also had discussions with the big private players in this regard," he added.
However, he refused to name the private companies with whom the discussions were held.
Import of coking coal by domestic steel industry crossed 45 million tonnes (MT) in 2014-15 as against about 39 MT in 2013-14.
It is likely to touch 180 MT in the wake of the country's ambitious target of producing 300 MT of crude steel per annum by 2025, the industry body said in a statement.
Besides, the coking coal import has increased from 13 MT in 2003-04 to over 39 MT in 2013-14 and during the same period the dry fuel production dropped from about 18 MT to 14 MT and supply of washed coking coal to steel plants was only 6.6 MT in 2013-14.
"This is resulting in a loss of forex reserves, stress in inland transportation and logistics and congestion at ports, as such it is imperative that indigenous production of coking coal is given a big thrust," Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat had earlier said.
Allocation of coking coal blocks to steel-makers has much merit as steel industry is capable of efficiently utilising 100 per cent of prime coking coal reserves from the blocks, Rawat had said.
The industry body has also urged the government to put coking coal blocks to auction and allocate them through competitive bidding in order to boost domestic production and generate revenue for the exchequer, it had said.
