Team News Riveting
Raipur, February 21
Looking forward to replacing a major chunk of imported coal in the next fiscal, Coal India Chairman Pramod Agrawal said today everybody wanted that the dry fuel should be supplied by the national miner.
“In financial year 2020-21 (FY2021) definitely we have given slightly more coal to non-regulated sector because the demand in power sector was less; however, today everybody wants that coal should be supplied by Coal India because our prices are very low compared to international market,” Agrawal said during a recent earnings conference call.
Replacing the whole thing in a year is slightly difficult, he said. But in coming years CIL will definitely increase the production and if performance remains good in the first quarter of next year, which he expected that it will be, then perhaps in next year that a lot of demand or a lot of import that is taking place can be replaced by Coal India, Agrawal added.
“I am targeting that the dispatch will be in the range of 660 to 670 million tonne (current fiscal). Secondly, our production this year also is likely to be very high, we are already about 25million ahead of what we did last year in the corresponding till today so I am looking forward that maybe we will end up this year with a production of more than 630 million tonne. We are targeting that we should try to achieve 640 million tonne, but that is a slightly difficult target but we will put everything into achieving this,” the CIL Chairman said.
The CIL had supplied a huge quantity of coal to the power sector and the dispatch this year compared to last year was 17 per cent to 18 per cent higher than what the company did last year or any other year which was a normal year. “Next year our production should grow, this year will be ranging at 630. I am looking for a growth of about at least 10 per cent or something in that range because last year our performance in production was very bad in April, May, June because of COVID situation. We were producing something like 14 lakhs tonnes per day whereas our capacity to produce in any quarter is about 18 to 19 to 20 lakh per tonne, we will try to maximize this,” Agrawal said.
He added: “If we are able to perform well in the first quarter that will give us about 40 million tonne extra coal and that itself will be adequate to propel our growth, so I am looking forward that next year the dispatches will be in the range of 700 and the production should also be in that range.”
On the issue of achieving 700 million tonne, the CIL Chairman said, “Some of the projects will outlive their life also, so this 700 million tonne what we are saying is the extra coal that projects will generate, it will take another 4 to 5 years to come in place not less than 5 years so it will not go up to 7500 but if all this coal is produced by 2030 about 1200 tonne or 1300 tonne type of coal can be produced.”
