Coal India 2014-15 output at 494 MT, meets 97% of target

Off-take lower than production at 489 MT

State-owned Coal India Limited (CIL) has recorded close to a seven per cent rise in production at 494 million tonnes (mt) in 2014-15, meeting about 97 per cent of its output target.

The miner had produced 462 mt coal in the 2013-14 and set the ouput target at 507 mt for the financial year ended March 31, 2015.

However, coal consumers could not entirely avail the benefit of increased production due to lack of evacuation infrastructure, leading to higher pithead stock. In fact, CIL’s offtake for 2014-15 was lower than its output at 489 mt. This is a break from the normal trend, where offtake has mostly been higher than production.

“About 10 per cent of annual production is lying on pithead,” an official said, noting that lower offtake once again highlights that “evacuation is a matter of grave concern.”

Meanwhile, government has set the outpot target for CIL at 550 MT. The Kolkata-based miner has understood to have signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ccoal ministry in this regard recently.

CIL, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production, has been under pressure to ramp up production. The demand supply gap was estimated to go up to 200 MT in 2016-17. However, Coal India has been asked by the government to increase its production to 1 billion tonne by 2020.