Coal news and updates

FY17 thermal coal imports to dip further: Railways

Indian Railways (IR) feels there will be a further decline in imports of steam coal by India in 2016-17 (FY17) and is, consequently, confident of making available a larger number of rakes for transportation of domestic coal even as it is fully geared up for this, a senior official told ICMW.

“We are fully geared up to meet the demand for rakes in 2016-17. We suffered in 2015-16 because of low demand from the power sector as a number of power plants virtually remained closed since they preferred buying low-cost electricity from imported coal-based power plants, but hope to make it up next year,” the official said.

“Next year too, we expect a decline in imports of thermal coal though whatever coking coal is arriving, will continue to do so,” the official said.

India’s thermal coal imports during the first 11 months of 2015-16 stood at 144.87 million tons (mt), down 13.60% compared to 167.68 mt imported during the same period of 2014-15, according to a provisional compilation by ICMW.

“Hopefully, the steel industry will pick up in 2016-17. Last year was very bad for it. If it picks up this year, more coking coal will arrive but, as far as thermal coal is concerned, import volumes should fall,” the official said.

To a query, the railway official said, “We do not fix a target in relation to the number of rakes we supply for loading of a particular product. Rather, we fix the target of the quantum of a particular commodity we will load… We do not decide the number of rakes to be allocated to a particular sector or industry.”