Availability of railway rakes has increased to about 200 a day, helping Coal India evacuate more coal to achieve a production growth of 12.3 per cent over last year, said Anil Swarup, Coal Secretary, on Wednesday.

“To meet our target of 1 billion tonne production, availability of rakes is essential. Coal India will add 200 rakes over the next four years through its own money and orders have already been placed for 34 rakes,” he said while addressing the members of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Managing Committee. Swarup added Coal India’s cash reserves will help it meet the investment requirement for adding the rakes.

The Ministry is also planning to open washeries at all the mines in the next three years to reduce the ash content and address the quality of coal being supplied.

On the recently held two rounds of coal auctions, Swarup said that so far an upfront amount of ₹900 crore has accrued to the States. “Seven mines have started operating but I hope by the end of the year all 28 will begin production,” he added.

The Coal Ministry also plans to give all future linkages to State electricity boards (SEB) which in turn will give them to power producers after signing power purchase agreements (PPA).

“For now we are holding on to the existing linkages. But all future linkages will be given to SEBs who will call for a reverse bidding on the tariffs and handover the linkages along with the PPAs,” said Swarup.

“We are doing this because in the current system often there are linkages but no PPAs or PPAs are in place but linkages are not making it very inefficient,” he added.

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