CIL misses target due to green hurdles

State-run mining giant Coal India missed its production target, producing just 431.325 million tonnes (MT) of coal in the just concluded fiscal, against the lower, recently revised target of 440.20 MT due to green hurdles, said a top official.

Coal India Ltd (CIL), the world's largest coal miner, had a production target of 460.5 MT for 2010-11, which was revised to 440.2 MT, barely a few days before the close of the fiscal.

"CIL could produce only 431.325 MT during the last fiscal as environmental clearances could not be obtained for its capacity expansion projects," a top company official said.

The production target could have been met from expansion projects but despite the company's best efforts, it could not obtain clearances for the same from Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoEF), said the official on condition of anonymity.

As many as 154 projects of the Navratna firm, spread across over 26,000 hectares of land and with a potential output of about 210 million tonnes, are awaiting environmental clearances at the Centre and state levels.

The Coal Ministry in December last year had expressed concerns that delays in the grant of environment clearance to the miner were likely to result in a production loss of about 190 million tonnes, valued at about Rs 18,800 crore, by March 2012.

CIL was short of the revised target by 2.01% while it missed the original, higher target by 6.3%.

This has resulted in poor annual growth: the company output growth in the last fiscal is nil against a projected growth of about 7%. In 2009-10, the company, which accounts for over 80% of the domestic production had produced 431.26 MT, closer to what it achieved in 2010-11.

In contrast, CIL's coal output in 2009-10 had grown at 7% more than the previous fiscal. In 2008-09, CIL's production was 403 MT.

The official said production has taken a dip due to non- clearance of projects and "no go" classification by MoEF, which has affected many a projects of the company.

MoEF has put 203 coal blocks with a potential output of 660 million tonnes per annum in nine coalfields under the 'no go' mining zone.

The government has already constituted a 12-member ministerial panel, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to address the issues hurting coal production. The Group of Ministers which has already met once is likely to meet again next month.