87 MT of Coal Would Be Available by FY17

Government has put focus to increase the supply of coal to the ailing power sector. For the same state run coal producer Coal India limited (CIL) has undertook 129 new coal mining projects to increase the coal production capacity in the country to 458 MT as planned under 12th five year plan. Company has already implemented 21 projects and another 20 have got in principle approval from the government.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of state (IC) for Power, Coal & New and Renewable Energy informed Rajya Sabha that contribution of 87 million tons is envisaged from new projects in 2016-17 and 182 million tons in the year 2019-20 and this additional coal production is envisaged to improve the availability of coal in the country. Government has also allowed import of coal under open general license and any quantity can be imported via that license.

Just to give more transparency to coal auction process of Coal linkages to non regulated sector like Cement, Sponge Iron, Captive power etc. government has already prepared a draft auction methodology based on Tariff as per the  suggestion s of inter ministerial committee constituted in January 2015 for conceiving competitive bidding process. Government has now invited public comments over the same before finalizing those drafts. Minister informed that “policy for linkage auction is under consideration of the Ministry.”