Policy paper on mechanism for granting coal linkages by June: Swarup

Coal secretary says auctions and allotments of 67 coal blocks so far unlocked nearly Rs 4,00,000 crore

Amid reports that the government is planning to auction coal linkages through the competitive bidding route, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said they would come up with a policy paper on a mechanism by June 30.

“SBI Caps has been mandated to suggest on this,” said Swarup.

“Don’t call it a coal linkage auction. Fundamentally, we felt after the coal block auction, there is a need to bring in transparency in other activities of coal ministry, including granting of coal linkages. How it will happen will be determined in the course of the next couple of months.”  

He said auctions and allotments of 67 coal blocks unlocked a total value of Rs 4 lakh crore.

“Of the 67 blocks auctioned or allotted, a total benefit of Rs 3.35 lakh crore is for states and another Rs 69,000 crore will be unlocked by way of rate benefit to the consumers,” he said at an interactive session of the Coal Consumers’ Association of India in Kolkata on Sunday. So far, 29 blocks had been auctioned and another 38 allotted to state entities.
 

Meanwhile, Swarup noted that 204 blocks that would be allotted by March 2016, which has a peak capacity of 800-900 million tonne, will be able to deliver 500 million tonne of coal production by 2020 to meet the 1.5 billion coal production target by the country by that time.