CIL yet to take final decision on staying in ICVL: CoalMin

Says time limit for taking a decision cannot be indicated at this stage

State-owned Coal India has not taken a final decision on continuing with International Coal Ventures Ltd (ICVL) as it has sought certain clarifications from the PSU consortium, Parliament was informed today.

"CIL (Coal India) board has not taken a final decision on its continuance in the ICVL," Minister of State for coal Pratik Prakashbapu Patil said in a written reply in Lok Sabha.

"As the CIL board has sought certain clarifications from ICVL, which are still awaited, the time limit for taking a decision cannot be indicated at this stage," the Minister said.

ICVL is a consortium formed to acquire coal mines overseas.

Earlier, CIL- which is among the two largest shareholders of ICVL - had said that it intends to quit the PSU consortium.

ICVL had also earlier made a presentation before the CIL board to convince the coal major to continue its association with the consortium along with other PSUs.

CIL felt that continuing with ICVL only involved financial burden without commensurate advantage.

Earlier, ICVL Chairman C S Verma had said the company was conducting due diligence of four to five properties in Australia, the US, Mozambique, Canada and Indonesia and expected to finalise one deal by the fiscal-end.

NTPC decided to opt out of the consortium as it was seeking thermal coal blocks, while other members were keen on coking coal.

Verma had earlier said that no new partner would be inducted in the consortium.

Besides CIL, ICVL's promoters include SAIL and RINL.

Since its inception in 2009, ICVL is yet to acquire any mine abroad, even though it has set a target of owning 500 million tonnes of coal reserves by 2019-2020.

International Coal Ventures Ltd is aiming to ink its first coking coal block acquisition in the current fiscal.