Thermal coal imports rose by nine per cent during the first quarter of the current financial year at Paradip port, which handles about a third of India's coal traffic, due to lower international rates amid domestic supply problems, said traders and industry officials.
“Yes, it is basically for cheaper prices the imports rose,” said Arun Bhatoria, a Kolkata-based coal trader.
In global markets, most-traded Australian coal with 14 per cent ash content has come down to $88 per tonne recently, down by 20 per cent from March prices as demand from two biggest consumer—China and the USA — dipped sharply during the period.
In the same time, imports at Paradip went up to 1.67 million tonne against 1.53 million tonne in the year ago period
Even though Odisha is the second largest coal producer in the country after Jharkhand with 25 per cent of total deposits, the high ash content in its coal makes it less viable to produce power. Local industrial houses, therefore, depend on low-ash contained coal produced in Indonesia, South Africa and Australia to blend with the domestic coal for power generation.
However, industries with captive power generation capacities and independent power producers said higher import during a weaker rupee regime indicate a problem in supply, and not demand.
In the past six to nine months, industries in the state have resorted to coal import due to supply problems from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL), one of the biggest subsidiaries of Coal India Ltd (CIL) and have suffered production loss due to this.
Last week, coal supply from Lingaraj coal mine of MCL got disrupted due to strike by truck transporters. The power plants of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) based in the state have even complained about less coal supply.
But MCL officials denied the allegation and passed the buck to the railways.
“We were supposed to send 36 rakes of coal before June to the power plants, but could dispatch only 25 rakes as the railways did not provide us required rakes. Therefore the stock at our railway sidings rose and we had to trim production accordingly,” said a spokesperson of MCL.
However, he admitted that in next couple of months the production at its coal mines will drop during the monsoon season. MCL has seven open cast mines and three underground mines at its control, producing more than 100 million tonne coal per year.
