Coal India Q1 output up 12% at 121.33 mn tonne

The miner has met 99% of its production target of 123.04 mn tonne in first quarter of current fiscal

State-owned Coal India (CIL) has recorded an output of 121.33 million tonnes (MT) in April-June 2015, recording a 12% growth over the same period of previous fiscal.

The miner has met 99% of its production target of 123.04 MT in the first quarter of the current fiscal. The marginal shortfall in the output vis a vis the target was mainly in the month of June as CIL the miner could produce 38.83 MT in June, 2015 against the month's target of 40.73 MT.

According to officials, rains had affected output to some extent in the last month, but the miner is very much on the course to meet the annual output target as it is confident making of making up the marginal shortfall in the coming quarters.

The miner, which is responsible for about 80% of country's coal production, has set an production target of 550 MT for 2015-16. The annual target was set in tandem with government's ambitious target of one billion tonne of production for the miner by 2020.



The offtake of coal at the miner's end stood at 129.48 MT during the April-June period this year against the target of 135.35.65 MT. CIL recorded an offtake growth of 8.3% in the first quarter. For the month of June, , the offtake of coal was at 42.18 MT against the targetted 43.45 MT.

Coal India, although missed its production target for the last fiscal, managed to clock a 7% growth at 494 million tonnes in 2014-15, compared to 463 mt in 2013-14. That was the highest growth in CIL output in about two decades.

Officials highlighted easing of land acquisition and environmental hurdles in the last seven-eight months has started yielding in. Union Coal secretary Anil Swarup recently pointed out, Coal India (CIL) has been able to acquire 2,000 hectares of land and has received 41 environmental and forest clearances in the last eight months.