The board of Coal India Ltd. (CIL) has sought modifications on the various clauses of the tender documents that are now being prepared for offering a clutch of projects to the private sector for development under the public-private-partnership mode.
In a bid to fast-track production, CIL had decided to harness the private sector for mining 13 greenfield projects with an annual capacity of 65 million tonnes. Planned around September 2014, this was to have been the first such initiative where the private sector was proposed to be brought in a comprehensive manner from the inception stage and over a longer time-span.
The strategy was to facilitate the projects through a private sector approach to project implementation, sources said. The capacity of these projects, varying between 5 million tonnes and 10 million tonnes is considered large. They are 13 in all and spread over five CIL subsidiaries — Central Coalfields, Eastern Coalfields, Mahanadi Coalfields, South Eastern Coalfields and Western Coalfields. However, the tender documents had to be drafted and re-drafted and this time round, the changes were over the penalties for termination of the contract and the force majure clauses.
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Last year’s budget had also announced the PPP mode of boosting coal production.
CIL at present outsources around 45 per cent of its total production to private sector operators.