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Coal India Ltd may cross 1 billion tonne output target by 2020: Goyal

Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal today said: “We are expecting the companies to supersede coal production targets, I am hopeful that Coal India would exceed targets set for it by 2020.”
The production of thermal coal in the country has increased by 8 per cent, he added.

The government has set an ambitious one billion tonne coal production target for Coal India by 2020.
Even as the Minister is optimistic that Coal India will achieve its target by 2020, the Public Sector Unit firm is likely to miss the set production target for the current financial year. Coal India may miss its output target of 507 million tonnes (MT) by 10 MT, during the current fiscal, on account of various delays in operationalising mines.

However, the government may set a target of 550 MT coal output for Coal India in the next financial year (2015-16).

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the government and Coal India on the same is likely to be signed shortly. Coal India’s output for April-February period was 436.96 MT as against the target of 450.14 MT, as per official data.

The company had missed its output target of 482 MT in the last fiscal (2013-14) by producing 462 MT of coal. Coal India Chairman and Managing Director S Bhattacharya had earlier said that ramping-up
output and improving profitability are among top priorities for the company.

‘Govt is identifying 15-20 blocks to be auctioned in next round’

Government on Thursday said that it is in the process of identifying 15-20 coal blocks to be auctioned in the next round, but can’t fix a deadline for completing the process for all the 204 coal blocks that were cancelled by the Supreme Court.

“15-20 coal blocks are being identified (for auction) and we are hopeful that the mining from these blocks could start soon,” Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters.

When asked by when the government will be able to allocate all the coal blocks cancelled in September, he said: “I don’t think that a timeline can be set for all 204 (coal blocks) because several of them are unexplored and several of them were alloted earlier based on irrational criteria. I would like to do the whole job very systematically.”

On the revenue that the government is targeting from the auction of these coal blocks, Goyal said: “We don’t believe in targets. We will work with honesty.” The minister was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of Coal Project Monitoring Portal. It will

automate the entire tracking process and help identify the bottlenecks. Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said: “This marks a new beginning in the process towards making everything transparent in coal so that nothing gets leaked.”

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