CIL likely to take final call on ICVL exit in next board meet

Mining major Coal India Ltd is likely to take a final call on its exit from International Coal Ventures (ICVL) in the next board meeting.

“The ICVL issue was discussed at the board meeting held on November 9, but final decision would be taken by the board at the next meeting,” a member of the CIL management board told PTI.

ICVL is a PSU consortium formed to acquire coal mines overseas. In May, Coal India - which is among the two largest shareholders of ICVL - had said that it intends to quit the PSU consortium. But, with ICVL making attempts to keep the consortium intact, there was a strong possibility that CIL may drop its exit plan, said sources.

ICVL recently made a presentation before the CIL board to convince the coal major to continue its association with the consortium along with other PSUs.

CIL had earlier felt that continuing with ICVL only involved financial burden without commensurate advantage. On November 8, ICVL Chairman C S Verma, who is also the chief of SAIL, had said the company was conducting due diligence of four to five properties in Australia, the US, Mozambique, Canada and Indonesia and expected to finalise one deal by the fiscal-end. NTPC, another promoter of ICVL with a 14 per cent stake, had also expressed its intention to quit the consortium.

Besides CIL and NTPC, ICVL’s promoters comprise SAIL, RINL and NMDC. While SAIL and CIL each hold 28 per cent stake in the consortium, the other promoters — RINL, NMDC and NTPC — have 14 per cent each. Since its inception in 2009, ICVL is yet to acquire any mine abroad, even though it has set a target of owning 500 million tonne of coal reserves by 2019-2020.