Coal news and updates

China is plowing ahead with its year-end targets for cutting unneeded coal production capacity while also seeking to ease production controls on selected miners to cool rising prices.

The world’s biggest producer is doing “extremely well” cutting overcapacity in both coal mining and steel making and is likely to surpass its annual goals, Xu Shaoshi, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an interview Friday in Beijing. The same agency in recent weeks has allowed selected large miners to boost production to cool prices that have risen more than 50 percent this year as the country’s output drops by a tenth.

"We are most likely to complete the target in cutting overcapacity in steel and coal earlier than planned," Xu said. “We will exceed the goal by the end of the year.”

Both industries are at the heart of President Xi Jinping’s “supply side structural reforms” as his government seeks to reduce industrial overcapacity and shift the world’s second-biggest economy toward consumer-driven growth.

The NDRC warned miners and steel makers in August to speed up closures that were behind schedule. About 95 million metric tons of coal capacity had been cut by the end of July, or 38 percent of the annual target of 250 million tons, the NDRC said last month. Steel was reduced by 21 million tons, only 47 percent of its 45 million ton target.

SOurce:Bloomberg