Coal news and updates

CIL to go for price restructuring when needed: Swarup

Coal India Ltd (CIL) will go for price restructuring at an appropriate time, as and when it is needed, Secretary (Coal) Anil Swarup has said.

“CIL periodically looks at various aspects and determines the price and it will do it in due course,” Swarup said when asked if CIL is looking at price restructuring.

The talks on rationalisation of prices by CIL is going on for some time now, especially after international coal prices softened and made the company’s higher grades expensive as compared to imported coal.

It was argued that CIL will cut prices of some of its higher grades to make it competitive vis-a-vis imported coal and to compensate for the loss of revenue, it will increase prices of some of its lower grades.

“That’s (price restructuring) what Coal India does... If there is need for price rationalisation, it will do so. That’s CIL’s job… I am sure it will do it when required,” Swarup said.

To a question, Swarup said, CIL’s efficiency has gone up in the last one-and-half years and, as such, cost of mining too has come down.

“It (cost of mining) is already coming down, if you look at per employee cost of coal because the number of employee is coming down by 10,000 per year, while production is going up (by 9% till January 2016),” he said.

“But the company should explore further as to what technology, equipment etc should be adopted to further improve efficiency, which is an ongoing process,” he said.