India’s coal import bill likely to go up by Rs 18,000 crore: Reports

In not so positive development for the economy, India’s coal import bill is likely to go up further by around Rs 18,000 crore due to the cancellation of coal blocks by the Supreme Court. In a landmark verdict which would have significant impact on the energy sector, the apex court on Wednesday cancelled 214 coal blocks that were illegally allocated to private firms by various governments between 1993 and 2011, exempting 4 coal block owned by the government. The blocks exempted were way less than that sought by the government, which asked the court to exempt 46 coal blocks that have either started production or are near it.

Meanwhile, India the third largest importer of coal, imported around 168.4 million tonnes of coal worth Rs 95,000 crore last fiscal and this figure is expected to rise in the current year. Further, reports suggest that in the event of complete de-allocation of the coal blocks, the import bill of India would jump by $3 billion.

As estimated by Coal Insights, based on monitoring of vessels and customs data, coal and coke imports stood at 50.94 mt in the first quarter of FY15. This however showed a modest increase of 3.87% over 49.04 mt imported during the same period last year. Of the total imports in first quarter FY15, steam coal accounted for 40.2 mt, coking coal 8.48 mt and anthracite and PCI coal around 0.2 mt. Imports of pet coke were at 0.39 mt while that of met coke was estimated at 0.2 mt.