Coal India Ltd will finalise the draft fuel supply agreement in its next board meeting.
While the schedule of the next board meet is yet to be finalised, Chairman Narsing Rao said that the meeting should be held ‘as early as possible’.
The board was scheduled to approve the draft FSA on Monday.
According to sources, having taken up the issue, the board insisted in putting up adequate safeguards to avoid any financial risk to the company in enforcing the proposed distribution of imported coal through a pooled price mechanism.
Imports are slated to amount to nearly 15 per cent (18-20 million tonne) of the total contracted quantities under the new FSAs.
With a trigger level (minimum guaranteed supply) set at 80 per cent and 1.5 per cent penalty provision for supply slippage between 65-80 per cent of agreed volume; CIL is now taking adequate measures to avoid financial risk in case imports do not materialise.
“Since we will be appointing a third party (MMTC) to execute the imports, we should safeguard our interests in case imports fall short of the agreed quantity,” a CIL source said.