Coal news and updates

CIL signs MoU with govt for 2014-15

April 17: Coal India Limited (CIL) is planning to produce 507 million tons (mt) coal in 2014-15 and has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with its administrative ministry – the Ministry of Coal (MoC).

S K Srivastava, Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Coal, and S Narsing Rao, Chairman, CIL, signed the document in New Delhi in the last week of March.

As per the MoU for fiscal 2014-15, MoC has fixed the coal production and off-take targets of 507 mt and 520 mt respectively against last year’s (2013-14) coal production and off-take targets of 482 mt and 492 mt respectively.

The actual off-take in 2013-14 was 471.50 mt, up 1.4% over 2013-14 whereas the actual production in 2013-14 stood at 462.53 mt.

As per the MoU, the projected growth rate for achieving production and off-take targets for 2014-15 are about 9.7% and 10.4% against the anticipated achievement of production and off-take of 2013-14 respectively.

Under the present MoU, the 2014-15 project management and implementation, technology, quality and customer satisfaction and initiatives of growth have been identified as major thrust areas.

To attain the targeted off-take for an “excellent” rating, CIL has projected requirement of about 221 railway rakes per day on an annual average basis for 2014-15 as against the average availability of about 184 and 190 rakes/day in 2012-13 and 2013-14 respectively.

Average growth in rake movement has been around 4% during the last four years. Under the present MoU, a growth of more than 16% has been envisaged for rail movement for achieving an “excellent” target.

The component of performance evaluation mainly consists of financial and non-financial parameters which carry equal weightage of 50% each.

The key parameters are sales turnover, gross operating margin rate, related financial ratios, CSR and sustainability, R&D, initiatives of growth, project management and implementation, HRD, technology, quality, customer satisfaction, coal production, off-take, productivity and safety etc.