Coal stock for 23 days is available for power plant, no shortage of coal: Piyush Goyal

Asserting that there is no shortage of coal in the country, Coal Minister Piyush Goyal has said that coal stock for 23 days is available with thermal power stations, he added that to significantly enhance coal production to meet the coal requirement, multi-dimensional efforts are in process by Coal India (CIL). Further, CIL has set a production target of 598.61 million tonnes (MT) for the current financial year, marking an increase of 11 percent over actual coal production of 538.75 MT last year.

The Minister said a special window of e-auction exclusively for power sector has been opened to make coal available to those power plants which are stressed or in short supply as they do not have coal blocks or linkages or long-term Power Purchase Agreements. In 2015-16, 13.79 MT and 2016-17, 12.448 MT of coal was available through auction in special e-auction for power sector.

Goyal said coal supplies to power utility sector was monitored regularly by an inter-ministerial sub-group comprising representatives of Ministries of Power, Coal and Railways constituted by the Infrastructure Constraints Review Committee of the Cabinet Secretariat. The sub-group takes various operational decisions for meeting any contingent situations relating to the power sector including critical coal stock position, besides several other measures to ensure regular coal supply to the thermal power plants.