On the back of increasing domestic coal production, India’s dependence on the imported coal has fallen by 6.37 percent to 191.95 million tonnes (MT) in the financial year 2016-17 (FY17) as compared to 203.95 MT in the previous financial year. As per the government’s data report, higher production by Coal India (CIL) has helped the country to move towards regime of coal surplus situation.
Besides, thermal and steam coal imports also witnessed reduction by falling 17.37 per cent to 29.82 MT at the top 12 major ports, during April-July period of this fiscal and handling of coking coal also dipped 4.45 per cent to 16.51 MT as against 17.27 MT in the corresponding period in the previous financial year. On the other hand, the country’s total coal production stood at 659.27 MT as against the demand of 884.87 MT.
India is the third-largest producer of coal after China and the US but is still facing fuel demand supply problem and in an effort to meet the country’s growing fuel demand, the government has announced plans to boost CIL’s annual production to the level of 1 billion tonnes by 2019.