Govt revises coal import target upwards to 35 MT in FY10

The coal import target of power utilities, including NTPC, has been increased by 40 per cent to 35 million tonnes in 2009-10 to ensure the units do not reel under the dry fuel shortage, a top official said today.

"We have set a coal import target of 35 million tonnes for power utilities in 2009-10 against the earlier planned 25 million tonnes," Power Secretary V S Sampath told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event here.

The Ministry had earlier set the coal import target at 25 million tonnes for power utilities, which was last month revised to 28.7 million tonnes in view of the additional power generation capacities lined up by companies.

Sampath said the calorific value of the imported coal is about 50 per cent higher than the domestic variants and so the quantity shipped from overseas would meet the power utilities fuel requirement of 53 million tonnes in 2009-10.

Among the major power companies, state-run NTPC would import 12.5 million tonnes of coal next fiscal as against the previous target of 10 million tonnes, the company's CMD R S Sharma said.

In 2008-09, the company has so far shipped nearly 5 million tonnes of coal against planned 8.2 million tonnes.

"We have imported nearly 5 million tonnes of coal and the remaining is being imported," Sharma said.

In 2009-10, Navratna PSU Coal India would supply 312 million tonnes of coal to power utilities. The quantity would be 20 million tonnes higher than this fiscal's 292 million tonnes.

"In incremental terms, we would be providing 20 million tonnes additional coal to power utilities next fiscal compared to the current financial year," Coal India Chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya has said.

As per the data released by the Central Electricity Authority, the power planning body, 37 thermal power plants, out of total 77 units in India, are running on coal stocks availability of less than seven days.

There are 20 power plants in the country which are running on supercritical coal stocks, which means the units have inventories that would last for less than four days.

The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) data shows five power plants do not even have coal stocks to last for a day. These are 1,000 MW Sipat in Chhattisgarh, 390 MW Torrent unit in Gujarat, 880 MW Nasik unit in Maharashtra, 420 MW Tenughat plant in Jharkhand and 1,340 Mejia unit in West Bengal.

The data reveals that 22 power plants are facing problem of inadequate coal linkages, whereas 13 others received less coal from the suppliers.

During 2008-09, it was planned to import 20 million tonnes of coal to feed the fuel-starved thermal power plants.