There is no shortage of coal in the country right now, Minister for Coal Piyush Goyal informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
“There is no shortage of coal for the power plants...During April-November 2018, Coal India Ltd (CIL) has supplied 315.94 million tonnes (mt) of coal to the power sector at a growth of more than 8 per cent compared to the supply of 291.78 mt in the corresponding period of last year,” Goyal said in a written reply to a question. “As per the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) report during the April-November 2018, total coal-based generation has been 99.16 per cent of the programme generation with a growth of 5.50 per cent over the corresponding period of last year. This has been possible due to increased supply of coal to the power sector,” he added.
As per the CEA report, coal stock at power houses as on December 16, 2018 stood at 15.52 mt as against a stock of 12.20 mt on December 16, 2017, registering an increase of 27.20 per cent.
But higher coal production does not mean that there are or will be lower coal imports.
In another statement, Goyal said, “As per provisional data released by the Directorate-General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), during April-October, 2018 (during first seven month of current fiscal) the import of coal was 136.58 mt with a growth rate of 14.91 per cent.”
According to Goyal, during October 2018 alone, the coal and coke import was 22.17 mt as compared to 18.72 mt during October 2017 with a growth rate of 18.42 per cent.
“This increase is largely due to growth of coking coal imports in which India is deficient and also imports by certain thermal power plants which were designed to run on imported coal,” Goyal said.
“The imported quantity of 2017-18 at 208.27 mt is less than the imported quantity of 2014-2015 which stood at 217.79 mt even as power generation and industrial activity grew substantially after 2014-2015,” Goyal pointed out.