Coal India likely to hike salaries of executives in next two months

Coal India (CIL) is likely to hike the salaries of executives in the next two months, a move that will result in an additional annual outgo of Rs 10 billion, its chief Gopal Singh said on Thursday.

"That (the salary hike of the executives) is due. It is almost at the final stage. I think that should happen within next two months," Singh told PTI in an interview.

The pay revision of the executives is due since January 1, 2017.

Around 23,000 executives would benefit from the move, that would have an impact of around Rs 10 billion per year on the company, Singh, who is the Chairman and Managing Director, said.

When asked if the company was mulling increasing the price of coal to offset the impact of the proposed salary hike, Singh said there is no such consideration.

Rather, CIL is looking at various ways of improving efficiency and productivity to contain the impact of the pay hike, he said.

"There are various ways to compensate it. (You can compensate it by) improvement in productivity, efficiency and reduction in cost of production," Singh said.

CIL in October last signed a wage pact with workers' unions for five years which, the PSU said, would have an estimated impact of Rs 56.67 billion annually on the miner.

CIL has nearly 300,000 employees and the wage agreement was due since July 2016.

According to industry experts, increase in coal prices was one of the ways to counterbalance the impact which the PSU incurred from rise in salaries of its non-executive staff last year.

The CIL board had in January approved revision of non-coking coal prices.

It had said the price revision will result in an incremental revenue of Rs 19.56 billion for the remaining period of 2017-18 while the total revenue will be Rs 64.21 billion.

Coal India, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production, is eyeing one billion tonne output by 2019-20.