State-run Coal India on Tuesday said it has introduced online signing of fuel supply agreements (FSAs) for power as well as non-regulated sector (NRS) customers participating in linkage-based auctions.

With this, CIL has done away with the earlier practice of physical submission of official papers, bank guarantees and other required documents. Now, all the required documents can be submitted in digital mode, thus making the entire process paperless, according to a Coal India release.

With the formalisation of FSAs electronically, the coal behemoth has also cut down the number of documents that were required to be submitted.

“The online signing of FSAs for linkage auctions effectively saves a lot of time for customers and evades the cumbersome process of physical submission of voluminous documents. It ushers in greater customer ease as they can conduct the entire process from their place of work without having to visit the coal companies” said a senior executive of Coal India.

90-day window

Once the FSA bidding process is complete, non-regulated sector (NRS) customers are provided a 90-day window, without penalty, to submit their documents.

Previously, in case of any discrepancy in documents the customers had to visit the coal company from their respective stations to get them rectified. “Now the fillip is that this can be done online in a reduced time frame, avoiding physical visits,” said CIL.

Coal India signs hundreds of FSAs annually necessitating maintenance of bulky documents. The present electronic arrangement makes the upkeep much easier. Since the documents are stored digitally, tracking the status of progress also gets simplified at supplier and customer ends.

Greater transparency in the system is another big advantage. For NRS customers, where sub-sectors include sponge iron, captive power plants, cement, steel and others the online validation of FSAs has begun from Tranche VII. Syngas producers subsector has recently been introduced to the list.

Among NRS so far, a total of nearly 700 FSAs have been formalised online for a total of about 19 million tonnes (MTs) of coal. In case of power sector, 262 FSAs have been signed digitally till now for a total quantity of around 24 MTs.

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