Thermal coal imports jumped 23% to 24.08 million tonnes at 12 major ports during the first quarter of the current fiscal, in spite of increasing domestic production of fuel. The 12 ports which handle approximately 61% of the country’s total cargo traffic (Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Marmugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Ennore, V O Chidambarnar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata) handled 19.62 MT and 8.10 MT of thermal and coking coal, respectively, for same period.
Altogether, these 12 ports handled 32.25 MT coal during the April-June quarter of the current fiscal as against 27.72 MT in the same quarter of the previous fiscal. Handling of coking coal remained flat with less than 1 % increase at 8.17 MT in that period.
The domestic requirement for thermal coal is about 80%, hence due to consistent fall in meeting the target as well as firms demand, the power plants route to imports. Coal India though recorded an increase of 32 MT in 2014-15 in coal production, but it could record barely a 31 MT increase in coal production in four years from 2010 to 2014. CIL’s production target for the current fiscal has been fixed at 550MT. Less production and due to increased demand the import is likely to increase to 185.5 MT in 2016-17, further widening the gap of demand supply in the country.