Coal India February target rises

The world's largest coal producer, Coal India Ltd (CIL), on Monday said it's production target for February rose by three percent to 47.98 million tonnes even as it's targeted output for April 2014-February 2015 fell short by three percent.

The state-owned firm had targeted production of 46.58 million tonnes last month.

In a filing with the National Stock Exchange, the company said while it's five subsidies exceeded production targets, Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL) and Western Coalfields Ltd wasn't able to achieve the projected output.

In the filing, it's Company Secretary M. Viswanathan said for the period April 2014 to February 2015, CIL produced 436.96 million tonnes (MT) of coal against the annual target of 450.14 MT.

The state owned company's major subsidiaries, including MCL, Northern Coalfields and South Eastern Coalfields had all missed their output targets for the same period.

The Maharatna company said until last month it has completed 97 percent of it's target for the period April 2014-February 2015 even as the union coal ministry ambitiously aims to produce one billion tonne of coal by 2019-20.

Last month, the coal miner had missed it's production target by seven percent at 46.6 MT against the target of 50.09 MT primarily owing to the strike called by it's trade unions which led to 1.47 MT loss.

The company has set a target of 507 MT of coal production for 2014-15.