Procedures holdup acquisition of overseas assets: Coal secretary

26 Sep 2011 Evaluate

On the issue of frequent failure of the Indian Public Sector Companies to acquire overseas assets, the new Coal Secretary Alok Petri, has advocated for the removal of procedural bottleneck in buying coal block overseas.

The coal secretary Alok Petri said ‘we want companies like Coal India (CIL) or SAIL to acquire assets abroad, using the huge funds that they have. But they have several procedural hurdles and needs many one-to-one negotiations to do such a thing. By the time they come to a conclusion, somebody else will go ahead with the acquisition. On the other hand, the private sector has the advantage of over-running this process. Hence, it is upon the government to try and see that this risk factor is reduced.’

Indian PSU, Coal India (CIL) has been trying to acquire coal blocks overseas. The CIL is planning to acquire assets overseas; however the proposal is still pending with the finance ministry. The CIL was in talk with the Indonesian Golden Energy Mines, the US miner Massey Energy and Peabody Energy for assets in Indonesia, US and Australia. The Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of CIL, N C Jha, said ‘once the approval comes, if the offers are not their, then we might look for some other assets.’

The coal secretary also indicated that the estimate by the Planning Commission that India will need nearly 800 million tonne of coal during the 12th five year plan is an over estimate. The coal secretary said, ‘it says that the country will need 250 million tonne (MT) by the end of 12th Five Year Plan, I think this estimate needs serious introspection.’

In the same time, the five coal workers unions i.e. INTUC, CITU, AITUC, HMS and BMS are planning to go for a strike across the country on October 10. When asked about this, Jha termed it as ‘illegal and unfortunate.’ The one day strike will cost around Rs 120 crore to the company and it also affects the production by 1 MT of coal.

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