The trend of fall in import of coal has continued in 2016-17, as for the period April-May 2016-17, coal import declined by around 5%, as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year and may decline to 160.16 million tonnes in the year 2016-17 as projected by Niti Aayog. The import of fossil fuel has dropped by 8.22% to 199.88 million tonnes in 2015-2016 from 217.78 million tonnes in 2014-15.
The decline is mainly on account of increased production by Coal India (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company which produces 80% of total coal production. CIL has undertaken a mix of strategies for narrowing the domestic demand-supply gap that address short to medium-term imperatives and also technological and human resource related issues. The company has predicted a production of one billion tonne of coal in 2019-20 from 538.75 million tonnes in 2015-16.
Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal has stated that, for evacuation of such huge coal to destination, CIL has planned for construction of three major railway infrastructure projects to be executed by Indian Railways in growing coalfields of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. He added that positivity of such steps has already manifested themselves in decline in imports in 2015-16 (since 2014-15). He also said that up to June, the supply of coal to the power plants will be at 142 million tonnes.