September coal imports dip 27% to 12.6 mn tonnes

Administration today stated that coal imports dropped by 27.16% to 12.6 million tonnes (MT) in the month of September a compared to the same period of 2014 owing to increase in domestic fabrication.

India-owned coal producer, Coal India Limited (CIL), may soon buy a few assets in South Africa, as the Asian country is working out details to open up the nationalized sector and allow private companies to mine and sell the commodity.

Mr.Swarup further added that the coal imports declined to 12.6 million tonnes last month as against 17.3 million tonnes of import in September 2014.

With unprecedented increase in coal production by Coal India Ltd, import of coal comes down for third successive month, Anil Swarup said in a tweet. As a result, almost a quarter of India’s 1.2 billion people have no electricity, according to the World Bank.

Coal India had missed the manufacturing objective in the last financial by 3 per cent registering a productivity of 494.23 MT. The objective for the current financial is 550 MT.

The report said that assuming a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent in domestic output, power producers’ dependence on imports would to fall to 8 percent by 2019-20 from 25 percent now, reversing the sharp rise in imports dependence between 2011 and 2015.