The Ministry of Coal is looking at a relaxed timeline for the 1 billion tonne coal production target it had set earlier for Coal India.
Speaking at a workshop to formulate the ‘Coal Vision 2030’, Minister for Coal Piyush Goyal said: “It is good news for us that demand has gone up. We can now once again aggressively pursue the 1 billion tonne target. Albeit now 2020 may not have much possibility or meaning because of the two years we lost when there was less demand. But we will work out a revised timeframe based on demand.”
Goyal’s statements come at a time when Coal India and the Railways are being heavily criticised for not supplying enough coal to power plants.
The government in early 2015 had set the target for Coal India to attain the 1 billion tonne of coal production by 2019-2020. A February 2015 official statement had said, “With the projected coal demand of the country hovering around 1,200 million tonnes by 2019-2020, at an envisaged growth rate of 7 per cent, CIL is expected to chip in 1 billion tonne, of which, 908 million tonne is the expected contribution from the identified projects.”
A January 2018 Coal Ministry statement said, “Coal India Limited (CIL) has envisaged enhancing its coal production to the level of 1 billion tonne by 2019-2020 from current level production of 554.14 million tonne in 2016-2017.”
A Coal Ministry official said, “We aim to study the coal demand in the country and accordingly set a target for Coal India. CIL will produce a billion tonne of coal as and when needed between 2020-2030.”
At the event, Goyal also launched the UTTAM App for coal quality monitoring. An official statement said that UTTAM stands for – Unlocking Transparency by Third Party Assessment of Mined Coal.
The portal would give detailed information for coal consumers regarding the Third Party Sampling parameters. The App will give access for monitoring coal quality to individual coal consumers, the statement added.