India makes efforts to enhance coal production, reduce import

India is making efforts to enhance coal production to produce power, a key need of the textile industry. The coal ministry has amended the Mineral Concession (Amendment) Rules, 1960, under MMDR (Amendment) Act, 2021, to allow a lessee of captive mines to sell coal or lignite up to half of the total excess production after meeting the end-use plant’s needs.

With this amendment, the ministry has paved the way for releasing of additional coal in the market by greater utilisation of mining capacities of captive coal blocks, a press release from the ministry said.

The reforms have led to an increase in domestic production of coal by 9.01 per cent.

India is making efforts to enhance coal production to produce power, a key need of the textile industry. The coal ministry has amended the Mineral Concession (Amendment) Rules, 1960, under MMDR (Amendment) Act, 2021, to allow a lessee of captive mines to sell coal or lignite up to half of the total excess production after meeting the end-use plant’s needs.

India is the world’s third largest energy consuming country and  electricity demand grows by 4.7 per cent each year.

The country has also significantly reduced import of coal despite a surge in power demand. Coal-based power generation from April to November 2021 was 671.906 billion units (BU)—an increase of 5.17 per cent over 638.82 BU during the corresponding period of fiscal 2019-20.

Imported coal-based power generation was 61.78 BU during April-November 2019 and has reduced by 51.38 per cent to 30.036 BU during the corresponding period of this fiscal.

Imports of all grades of non-coking coal has reduced to 107.36 MT during the period April to November 2021 from a level of 131.51 MT during the corresponding months of the fiscal 2019-20, leading to a decline of about 18.36 per cent. 

The overall import of coal has also reduced to 147.14 MT during April-November 2021 compared to 165.57 MT during the corresponding period of 2019-20—a decrease of about 11.13 per cent—which has resulted in significant  savings of forex reserves this year, especially when coal prices are high in the international market.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)