Union Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said that the government has taken many steps to secure coking coal supplies for the domestic steel industry. He also said the efforts are being made to import coking coal from the US, Russia and Mongolia to diversify the coking coal import sources.
Pradhan has stated that while output of iron ore, another key raw material in steel production, in the country is sufficient to meet the current demand, the entire demand of coking coal is not met from domestic production as the availability of high-quality coking coal (low-ash coal) in the country is limited and, thus, no option is left but to resort to import of coking coal.
The minister also highlighted that the total demand of coking coal for the steel industry was 58.37 million tonne (MT) during 2018-19. Out of this, 51.83 MT was met through imports, 1.6 MT was provided by Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL) and Coal India (CIL) and the remaining was catered by captive collieries of SAIL and Tata Steel.