Coal India e-auction fuel allocation rises 21.5% in to 19.76 MT in June qtr

State-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Friday said it logged a 21.5 per cent growth in coal allocation at 19.76 million tonnes (MT) under the four e-auction windows during the April-June quarter.

In the corresponding quarter a year ago, the fuel allocation by the PSU under all the four windows of e-auction was 16.26 MT, a CIL statement said.

The four categories of e-auction are spot e-auction of raw coal, special forward e-auction for power producers, exclusive e-auction for non-power sector and special spot auction.

Booking by non-power sector, under an exclusive e-auction to it, witnessed a three-fold rise during April-June 2020 over the same period in 2019.

CIL has allocated a total of 6.66 MT during the referred period to this sector against 2.2 MT in the year-ago quarter, with a volume increase of 4.46 MT.

Under spot e-auction, the maharatnacoal miner had offered 24.4 MT during the first quarter of FY'21, up by 149 per cent from 9.8 MT in the comparable period of 2019.

However, amid the Covid-19 led crimp in demand since March, the actual booking volume was marginally down at 6.9 MT as compared to 7.4 MT in the same quarter last year.

For the month of June, coal booked under spot e-auction logged 77 per cent growth at 3.7 MT against the same month a year ago.

During June last fiscal, CIL booked 2.1 MT of coal.

"June 2020 also yielded CIL a growth of around 48 per cent against June 2019 in regard to total allocation of coal under the four e-auction sale schemes," the PSU said.

CIL's allocation was 5.83 MT in June as compared to 3.95 MT in June last fiscal.

CIL accounts for over 80 per cent of domestic coal output.