Coal India Ltd, the world's biggest miner, has pushed back its ambitious 1 billion tonne production target by at least two years owing to the existing ground realities, a top official of the company has said. "One billion tonne annual coal production target will be achieved but it is not possible by 2020 as thought initially, due to various ground realities. We are now hoping to achieve it in the next 3-4 years from now," the official told PTI. The government had earlier set a target of 1 billion tonnes coal output by FY'2019-20. Although Coal India has been investing towards establishing railway connectivity with its mines and procuring rakes in order to evacuate more coal, a sharp rise in renewable energy sources is compelling the miner of the dry fuel to review its earlier production goals, the company has said in its latest annual report. Coal India subsidiary Northern Coalfields and the railways are jointly investing around Rs 6,000 crore in Madhya Pradesh to lay new tracks and converting the existing ones into double gauge enabling it an additional 15 million tonnes of the fuel capacity. In its annual report, Coal India has also said that there was an urgent need to revisit its one billion tonne output programme following changes in the environmental paradigm and coal demand. The company had produced 567 million tonnes )MT) coal in FY'18 and targets to produce 630 MT in the current fiscal. However, these developments has not discouraged the miner in investing in mine expansion and procuring mining equipments. Coal India has said it will spend Rs 12,000-13,000 crore over the next three years for procuring mining equipment. In the current fiscal, out of Rs 9,500 crore total capex, orders worth Rs 5,000 crore would be placed for equipment. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Coal India has pushed its 1 billion metric tonne (mt) production target back by at least two years because of changes in the environmental paradigm and coal demand. The world’s biggest miner produced 567 million mt in the last financial year and has forecast output of 630 million mt in the current year. In the interim, it has been developing rail connections to meet the growth in production and is expected to spend INR12,000 crore ($1.7bn) on mining equipment during the next three years with the intent of reaching the one billion mt target in three or four years.