The festival of Holi along with an extended weekend due to Good Friday is likely to result in an output loss of one million kg for Coal India Ltd. (CIL).
With the transport contractors also expected to take off for Holi, offtake too will be lower during this week, which is also the last of the current fiscal. “Since Holi has come late this year, there is little time to make up,” CIL Chairman S. Narsing Rao told The Hindu .
He said that the company was likely to end 2012-13 with a production that would be some 10 million tonnes off the 464 million tonnes target. Offtakewould be around 467 million tonnes against the targeted 470 million tonnes.
The Coal Ministry has set a production target of 482 million tonnes, and an offtake target of 492 million tonnes for CIL in 2013-14, as per the memorandum of understanding signed on March 22.
The required growth rates for achieving coal production and off-take targets of 2013-14 were about 7.1 per cent and 5.8 per cent, respectively, higher than this year’s rates of around five per cent.
The country’s coal belt is concentrated in the eastern states of Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal but stretches into eastern Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west, passing through Chattisgarh. In almost all these areas, Holi is a three-day affair , starting a day before the actual day which is called Choti Holi and stretching for a day after. This year, Good Friday is also on the same week-end.
In areas such as the Ranchi-headquartered Central Coalfields, a sizable number of workers would take this day off too.
Pit-head stocks
Any acceleration in production ahead of the extended week-end is not feasible as pit-head stocks are already high at 54 million tonnes.
