PM may review coal, power projects on July 27

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to convene a meeting on July 27 with various ministries, including coal, power and environment, to assess their performance and sort out inter-ministerial differences causing delay in execution of key projects.

"Prime Minister is expected to chair a meeting on July 27 of different ministries like coal, power and environment," sources said.

The meeting, which has been put off several times, will involve Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal and Environment Minister Jayanthi Natrajan, sources added.

In the meeting, targets for the terminal year of the 11th Plan (2011-12) will be discussed, sources said, adding that the targets will be discussed, based on the assessment of their actual requirements and progress made during the last four years.

Stranded coal projects due to delays in environment and other clearances besides power capacity addition targets are also likely to come up in the meeting.

According to an estimate made by the Planning Commission, the demand-supply gap for coal in the ongoing year, which is also the terminal year of current Five-Year Plan, has been assessed at 142 million tonne, with domestic availability of only 554 million tonne against the requirement of 696 million tonne.

Coal ministry is of the view that 'no-go' policy of Environment ministry under which mining in 203 coal blocks is not allowed, has been the major reason for the increase in coal shortages.

According to the ministry, the 'no go' mining issue has affected a potential production of 660 MT of coal per annum.

Jaiswal had earlier said that Prime Minister Singh was concerned over the economic growth being hampered by the bottlenecks in the coal production.

A Group of Ministers (GoM) on Coal, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is already on the job to find a common ground between the MoEF and coal, power and steel ministries.

According to the Planning Commission, the country's coal shortage may rise to 200 million tonne by 2017 against 142 million tonne by 2012. The demand for dry fossil fuel by 2016-17 has been projected at 1,000 million tonne against a production of 800 million tonne.