‘Would not like to go back to era of coal shortages,’ says Minister

The Ministry of Coal would continuously recalibrate the sector’s output but there was no question of returning to the era of shortages, said Piyush Goyal, Minister for Coal, Power and Renewable Energy.

“We can’t go back to coal shortages,” he said, replying to a question on the need to review the one-billion-tonne production target set for CIL or even the 598-million-tonne target for this fiscal.

He said that both the production and the off-take targets were dynamic targets. Even as Coal India clocked a growth rate of 1.1 per cent against the 9 per cent projected at the beginning of fiscal 2017, coal stocks had risen to 50 million tonnes which is nearly 45 days’ production. Much of this is attributed to sluggish demand from power sector.

“Power demand and capacity are growing,” remarked Mr. Goyal saying that this was the reason why CIL cannot be allowed to return to days of coal shortages.

“Both power and coal are in surplus now.”

Safety review

A meeting of all the heads of the seven coal-producing subsidiaries of CIL as well as CIL Chairman was held here. A detailed safety review meeting was also conducted.

The meeting gained importance in the backdrop of last week’s coal mine collapse in Jharkhand, which has claimed 18 lives so far.

To a query as to whether such a major accident will lead to a rethink on contractual coal mining, the minister said while the government would await results of the investigation to see if there was any lapse on part of the mine operators, strong action would be taken to prevent such mishaps.