Coal India achieves record 536.51 mt production but falls short oftarget for 15-16

05 April, Kolkata

World’s single largest coal producer – Coal IndiaLimited (CIL)- has achieved a significance growth of 8.55 per cent in coal production, that is 536.51 million tons (mt) for 2015-16 financial year. However, the all time record output for the Maharatna company was not enough to meet its production target of 550 mt.

The public sector unit fell short of target of by a 2.45 per cent, India Coal Market Watch (ICMW) reported.Production during financial year 2015-16 stood at 536.51 mt, up 22.78 per cent,compared to 494.23 mt produced in 2014-15.The actual production in 2015-16 was 97.55 per cent of the target of 550 mt.

In March 2016, production stood at 59.19 mt, up 3.35 per cent compared to57.27 in the corresponding month of the previous year and marginally higher from the March target of 56.87 per cent. However, on a month-on-month basis, production of CIL rose 16.03 per cent from 51.01 mt produced in February.The state-run coal miner accounts for 80 per cent of the total coal production in India and the company has set a target of producing 550 mt coal in2015-16 and increase it further to 1,000 mt by 2019-20.

A separate report said despite the current fiscal year- 2016-17 began on April 1, the Ministry of Coal (MoC) is yet to set a production target for CIL.”The initial meetings to set the annual action plan (AAP) target for2016-17 was not held till late March and, going by this, the target ismost likely to be finalised only around the middle of April,” company sources said.

The company’s provisional production target for 2016-17 that had been fixed in February 2015, was 598 million tons (mt).”There appears to be no hurry to finalise the target for 2016-17 as2015-16 saw an impressive growth in production with supplies to consuming sectors, particularly to power sector, going up significantly,” the sources added.

“Because of lower than expected growth in demand of coal from the power sector and low lifting, CIL is saddled with a pithead vendible stock of around 54 mt,” the sources said.In February 2015, the company had fixed its production target for five years starting 2015-16 as per which it was to produce 548 mt in2015-16, 598 mt in 2016-17, 662 mt in 2017-18, 790 mt in 2018-19 and925 mt in 2019-20.