CIL production target short-fall at 12 MT in first seven months

Heavy rains in October widens gap between production and target

With the unprecedented rain affecting state-owned Coal India's (CIL) performance in the month of October, the gap between the production and target for the miner has further widened.  

The company has recorded a 3.6 per cent growth in coal production at 235  million tonne (MT) in the first seven months of the current fiscal, meeting about 95 cent of its target.

The company had set a target of 247 MT output for the April-October period of 2013-14. While in the first six months CIL was about 6 MT short of the target, with the dismal performance in October the gap has now almost doubled.

“October was very bad for us. The unprecedented rain adversely affected our performance in the month,”  N Kumar, director(technical) of CIL said. In the month of October, CIL recorded an output of 35 MT as against a target of 40 MT.

Meanwhile, CIL's off-take for the April to October period of the 2013-14 fiscal stood at 259 MT MT as against the target of 268 MT. For the month of September, 2013 CIL's  off-take stood at 35.4 MT as against a target of 41 MT.

When asked, this would be an hindrance to meeting CIL's Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA) commitment, Kumar said, “There is nothing to worry so far about meeting FSA commitment. We are confident production will scale up in the later part of the year.”

As per the MoU between CIL and Coal ministry, production and offtake targets for the state miner were set at 482 MT and  492 MT respectively.