Team News Riveting
Kolkata, April 8
Coal India Limited (CIL) more than doubled its capital expenditure to an unprecedented high of Rs 13,115 crore in the financial year 2020-21(FY’21) compared to the previous year.
Against the capex of Rs 6,270 crore in FY’20, the company clocked 109 per cent growth amid the Covid slump. Never before was such capex growth registered by CIL. This comes at a time when the Centre has advised CPSEs of the country to scale up their expenditure to boost the economy.
This also marks the state owned Maharatna coal miner’s all-time high capital expenditure, breaching the ramped-up capex target of Rs 13,000 crore, achieving 101 per cent of the revised target.
CIL’s original sanctioned capex budget was Rs 10,000 crore for FY’21. However, the government assigned CIL a challenging 130 per cent achievement of the budgeted target the company to be evaluated as ‘Excellent’ under this specific parameter in MoU rating. This prompted CIL, for the first ever time, to tweak up its capex budget by 30 per cent and revise it to Rs 13,000 crore.
“The entire capital expenditure was funded through internal resources. Capex growth during all the four quarters of FY’21 was significantly higher compared to previous year. Progressive upto December’20 also our capex utilization was more than what was mandated by the Ministry of Coal” said a senior official of the company.
Procurement of heavy earth moving machinery at Rs 3,453 crore topped the list of capex heads for FY ’21, followed by land at Rs 2,470 crore, yet another important capital of CIL.
Capex in joint ventures, in proportion to CIL’s shareholding, like Talcher Fertilizers Limited and Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Limited accounted for Rs 2,194 crore. CIL’s coal evacuation initiatives which include setting up coal handling plants, silos and constructing sidings accounted for Rs 1,398 crore. Construction of rail corridors and railway lines summed up Rs 1,166 crore, while the rest was made up by different other heads.
CIL and five of its subsidiaries CCL, NCL, WCL, MCL and CMPDI coasted through their respective revised capex targets for 2020-21. SECL, though did not surpass its revised budgeted target, was the highest capex spender among all CIL’s subsidiaries at Rs. 3,260 Crores creating a record for itself.
“The high capex will yield positive results to the company in ensuing years in terms of production and coal transportation” the official added.
