Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has expressed need to hike domestic coal prices citing that energy in India is underpriced, which has led to distortions in domestic energy market. Ahluwalia has said that domestic coal is priced much below imported coal even after adjusting in terms of calorific value, therefore India should align the domestic coal price to international levels.
Stating the need for gradually increasing coal prices, Ahluwalia said that the government's recent decision to pass cost of costlier imported coal to consumers was an absolutely unavoidable move as the rising demand of cheap domestic coal is eroding the energy market. India's energy demand is poised to grow between 6.5-8 percent annually by 2030 as compared to world energy demand at a rate of 1-2 percent per annum in the next 20-30 years.
In spite of world's fifth largest in terms of reserves and third-largest producer of coal, India's domestic output has failed to keep pace with demand over the past few years. At present, Indian domestic coal demand is around 35 percent higher than domestic supply, resulting into a high deficit, of which a huge part is being met by costly imports from Indonesia, South Africa and Australia. In the previous fiscal, India imported $16 billion worth of coal. Meanwhile, in order to meet India’s growing coal demand, the government will soon invite bids from private players to start coal mining in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode in the country, which would also end the monopoly of public sector unit Coal India. The government is likely to auction 10 coal blocks in the month of March next year.
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