Coal news and updates

India’s January coal imports from SA up 54% y-o-y

India’s imports of coal from the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) in South Africa stood at 3,340,581 tons in January 2016, showing an increase of 53.97% compared to 2,169,615 tons imported in January 2015, according to data available with ICMW.

On a month-on-month basis, the imports were up 13.33% compared to 2,947,672 tons imported in December 2015, the data revealed.

The continued soft trend in prices is prompting Indian consumers to use slightly higher quantity of South African coal at the cost of Indonesian coal.

India accounted for as much as 54% of the total coal exported through the terminal in January 2016. In fact, India accounted for as much as 47.48% of the total 75.37 million tons (mt) of coal exported through RBCT in 2015 as its total imports stood at 35.79 mt during the year.

The total imports of the fuel by India from RBCT in the first 10 months of the current fiscal of 2015-16 (April-January) stood at 31.21 mt, up 12.31% as compared to 27.79 mt imported during the same period of 2014-15.

Following table gives details of India's monthly coal imports from RBCT in 2016, 2015 and 2014 (in tons):