Coal news and updates

CIL production, despatches satisfactory, but below target

September 17: Coal India Ltd (CIL) Chairman & Managing Director S Narsing Rao, on September 17, said the company's coal production and despatches growth till the middle of September is "satisfactory", but still below target.

"As on today, our coal production growth and despatches growth are satisfactory, but not very," Rao told ICMW.

He, however, hoped the deficit in production and despatches as compared to the targets would be met in the second half of the current financial years as both generally peak during the second half due to favourable weather conditions.

"So far as production is concerned, we are running short by about 5 mt compared to the target, but the growth rate is 3.6% while the asking growth rate is 6.2%," he said.

"Where despatches are concerned, today we are at 3.8% against the target of about 5.8%. Things are not bad, but they still need to be improved. We are putting too many eggs in the second half but, hopefully, we will manage them well!" Rao added.

On being told that the company's production has been falling continuously month-on-month since the beginning of the current financial and whether it was a cause for concern, the CMD said, "Month-on-month business is no big deal. I don't understand why people react too much to that."

"Month-on-month shows how good was your last month vis-à-vis this month. If last month's performance is exceptional, even though there may be good performance this month, that may not be considered great growth. And vice-versa if last month's performance for any reason was not very good and if this month's was average, it will give an impression that it is a stellar performance," he explained.

"Too much significance should not be attached to every month but to a quarter or an aggregate one," Rao said.

The CMD said, at present, the company has no issues with availability of rakes as sufficient numbers of rakes are being made available right now.

"In September, we are getting about 184 rakes per day. We have no issues with Railways currently. In fact, during the last five months, the rake availability had been extremely good, except on a particular occasion, and at particular place," he said.

Rao pointed out that currently the overall availability of rakes is not an issue. Rather, there are constraints from CIL's side in bringing the coal to the loading point.