Coal news and updates

CIL charts annual production targets till 2019-20

April 2: Coal India Ltd (CIL) aims to increase its coal production to 925 million tons (mt) annually by financial year 2019-20 from a low of around 495 mt produced in 2014-15 and 548 mt targeted for 2015-16 even as it sees land acquisition as a major hurdle in achieving these targets in the future.

According to information available with ICMW, the company plans to increase its production to 598 mt in 2016-17, to 662 mt in 2017-18, 790 mt in 2018-19 and finally to 925 mt in 2019-20.

“Achieving the targets would be a great challenge in view of the difficulties being faced in acquisition of land. Timely completion of planned railway lines for evacuation of coal would also be a factor in achieving the targets,” said an official from the company.

“Unless we manage to acquire land for new projects to increase production and the planned rail lines are completed on time for evacuation of coal, achieving the production target would be difficult,” the official said.

The official further clarified that the targeted production figure does not include output from one of its subsidiaries, North Eastern Coalfields Ltd (NEC).

Following table provides subsidiary-wise and yearly break-up of CIL’s production targets (in million tons) for the period 2015-16 to 2019-20: