Coal India's Apr-Feb output is 437 MT, misses target

Company had set an output target for the first 11 months at 450.14 MT

State-owned Coal India's output for the April-February period of the ongoing fiscal was 436.96 million tonnes (MT), missing its target by 2.9%.

Coal India had set an output target for the first 11 months at 450.14 MT, the company said in a filing to BSE.

However, the company's output in February was at 47.98 MT as against a target of 46.58 million tonnes.

Coal India's new Chairman Sutirtha Bhattacharya had earlier said that ramping up output and improving profitability would be the top-most priorities for the company, although he admitted that the coal production target of 925 million tonnes by 2019-20 was a huge challenge.

The Coal India Chairman had said: "Seeing the timely completion of three major railway lines is our priority short term strategy leading to unlocking of large coal reserves in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha for extraction."

Coal India, which accounts for over 80% of the domestic coal production has to achieve production of 506 million tonnes in the ongoing fiscal.

The company had missed its output target of 482 million tonnes in the last fiscal and just produced 462 million tonnes of coal.