Sriprakash Jaiswal to meet top brass of Coal India for solving the supply modalities

KOLKATA: During the later part of this month Mr Sriprakash Jaiswal will be meeting the top officials from the Ministry and also Coal India to solve the coal supply modalities for the upcoming fiscal year, after the recent directive issued by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

First, he will be asking CIL to make extra supplies of almost 50-million tonnes of coal in the fiscal year 2012-13 and it will reach them to power the stations ignoring the concerns on the logistics front.

Presently, CIL is agreement-bound to supply 90% (trigger level) of the 306-million tonnes need to 75-power stations in India which have been commissioned before April 2009.

If the firm is now compelled to ink fuel supply agreements (FSA) with the projects commissioned in the past two years, the overall supply commitment will touch almost 350-million tonnes during the next fiscal year.

Assuming that Coal India will attain modest 5-6% manufacturing growth next fiscal, there will be shortfall of 25-30 million tonnes.

The shortfall can be managed with the restriction of the supplies to the current customers to 90% of need. The available projections proposed many in this category have been enjoying 100% or more supplies.

The shortfall in production can be mitigated with the dilution of the pit-head stock. CIL had ended last fiscal with inventory of 70-million tonnes.