Coal block auction to get delayed further to March’2014

30 Oct 2013 Evaluate

The coal block auction to private firms is likely to get delayed to March next year from December, 2013 as the government has enhanced the action target to 10 blocks from 6 coal blocks planned earlier. Coal Ministry has asked CMPDIL, the mine planning and consultancy company of Coal India, to assess the reserves of four more coal mines and submit its report by the next year. The government wants to allot coal blocks to private players in order to kickstart coal mining in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode in the country. Further, the move will help to enhance country’s coal production for meeting India’s growing coal demand and will also end the monopoly of public sector unit Coal India. In July, the government had earlier allocated 14 coal mines to central and state public sector units, including four to NTPC.

In the previous month, the government has approved the new methodology for auctioning coal blocks in order to provide upfront and production-linked payments and benchmarking of coal sale prices. The move will ensure greater transparency in auctioning the fully explored coal blocks and will also enable the government to allot coal mining licences through competitive bidding for the first time. The government will put coal blocks for auction after the environment ministry reviews and bidders approval to a minimum work programme. According to the new methodology, bidders have to provide production-linked payment on rupee per tonne basis, plus a basic upfront payment of 10 percent of the intrinsic value of the coal block. Meanwhile, intrinsic value will be calculated based on net present value (NPV) of the block arrived through the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.

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