WCL proposes price hike on certain grades of coal

Coal India arm WCL has proposed to increase the price of coal by Rs 500 a tonne on certain grades of the dry fuel to make some of its projects viable.
"If sale price of Western Coalfields Ltd is increased by Rs 500 per tonne for G-8 and G-9 grades as a special dispensation to WCL, then some unviable projects will become viable on Notified Price," according to a presentation made by WCL to the Coal Ministry.
It further said that some of its coal mining projects which would become viable include Singori Open Cast, Hindustan Lalpeth OC, Kamptee Deep OC, Padmapur Deep OC and Dhau North Under Ground.

Special dispensation to WCL will amount to increase in its coal output to 60 million tonnes (MT), it said. In the last fiscal WCL's output was 39.73 MT.
This comes at a time when the government is the process of making strategies for doubling Coal India output to one billion tonne over the next five years.
Coal India had in December last year hiked prices of non-coking coal produced by its subsidiary Western Coalfields by 10 per cent.

On account of increase, CIL had said, Western Coalfields will earn an additional revenue of Rs 139.84 crore for FY'14.
CIL had also increased the price of a certain grade of coal from one of its mines in Godda district of Jharkhand in April this year.

Coal India, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production has missed its output target of 482 MT in the last fiscal, producing 462 MT of coal.