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India likely to be the largest coal importer in 3-5 years: Platts

With coal supply issues plaguing the domestic economy, the country is likely to surpass China as the largest importer of coal in the next 3-5 years, an official of Platts McGraw Hill Financial said today.

"India is likely to be largest importer of coal in the next 3-5 years, surpassing China," Editor-in-Chief for coal in Platts McGraw Hill Financial James O'Connell told reporters here.

Currently, the country is the second largest importer of the commodity to feed its burgeoning energy needs and had imported around 135 million tonnes of coal in the last fiscal.

 The country had forked out about USD 15.5 billion for import of the commodity during this period.

 Interestingly, high coal imports due to lesser domestic production has aggravated current account deficit problem of the country, which had touched a high of 4.8 per cent during the last fiscal.

 Platts is one of the global information service provider on energy and metals and a source of benchmark price assessments in the physical energy markets.

 As per Platts, while China has increased domestic production of coal in the last decade, India is still facing supply side issues.

 Referring to impact of rupee volatility, the official said volatility in the rupee has created a lot of uncertainty in the market with traders not entering into forward contracts.

 Rupee has lost around 20 per cent in the last few months on the back of possible tapering of US bond buying programme coupled with weak macro fundamentals like high current account and fiscal deficit.

 He also said Indonesia is likely to remain one of the top exporters of the commodity to the country going ahead.

Source: The Economic Times