Coal India production at 108 million tonne in April-May

NEW DELHI: State-owned CIL on Wednesday said it produced 108.2 million tonne of coal in the first two months of the ongoing fiscal year, registering year-on-year increase of 28.8 per cent.

The company had produced 84 million tonne (MT) of coal in April-May last fiscal year, Coal India Ltd (CIL) said in a filing to BSE.

The company's output in May increased to 54.7 MT from 42.1 MT in the corresponding month of previous fiscal year, the filing said.

"Accelerating its production, CIL posted a strong 30 per cent output growth in May'22. The increase in volume terms was 12.6 MT," the PSU said in another filing.

Facing a production target of 700 MT for 2022-23, which entailed 12.4 per cent growth rate at the beginning of the fiscal year, CIL brought down the year's asking growth rate to 9.9 per cent by the end of last month.

"Admittedly, sustaining the level of growth witnessed so far, throughout the year, is difficult but we will be monitoring the progress month by month to augment the output," said a senior official of the company.

CIL supplied 52.4 MT to the power sector last month, against 44.5 MT supplied in May last fiscal year.

"During May'22.CIL's despatch to the power sector at an average of 1.69 MT per day was higher than the demand of 1.65 MT. This helped the stock at power plants, having linkage with CIL, go up by 16,000 tonne per day during the month," the statement said.

Concurrently, CIL's supplies to thermal power plants jumped to 102.2 MT till May, registering a growth of 16.7 per cent over April-May 2020-21.

CIL's total offtake for May was 61.2 MT compared to 55 MT in the year-ago period, whereas the total offtake for April-May was 118.7 MT against 109.2 MT in the year-ago period. 

CIL was able to liquidate the coal stock at its end from a level of 60.6 MT at the beginning of the year to 50.2 MT as of May 31, 2022.

Coal India accounts for over 80 per cent of domestic output.