Team News Riveting
Raipur, July 1
Once the largest dry fuel producing company of the Coal India Limited (CIL), Chhattisgarh-based South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL) has reported a marginal increase in the coal offtake in the month of June 2022 and also the first quarter of the current financial year 2022-23.
In the month of June, SECL’s offtake or selling was reported to be 12.7 million tonnes (MT) of coal compared to 12.9 MT sold during corresponding period of last financial year. Even the company’s cumulative offtake in the first three months of the current fiscal has been severely affected with SECL selling 39.4 MT as against 38.9 MT sold in the same period of last fiscal.
The offtake is marginally high by 1.6 per cent in June and 1.3 per cent in the first quarter. The other leading entities of the CIL including Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) and Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) have reported 23.2 per cent, 23.4 per cent and 21.5 per cent increase in the coal offtake last month.
The SECL officials could not be contacted to know the reason for the sluggish sale of coal. However, the development has added concern for the CIL officials with the underperformance of once its flagship entity at a time coal ministry has been pulling all the strings to boost supply to the power producers and manage the coal crisis in the country.
The low volume of sales has cast its shadow in the production of SECL. It ranked last in terms of growth percentage of production among all CIL entities in the month of June. SECL’s production was up by 15.6 per cent last month, which was lowest in terms of percentage among the eight companies of CIL.
In the last fiscal, MCL succeeded SECL to take the top spot in coal production in the CIL.
CIL overall offtake increased 15.2 per cent in June while the cumulative sales increased by 10.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2022-23.
