The ministerial panel headed by the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is likely to meet on January 21 to discuss the draft Coal Regulator Bill, said the Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal.
He was speaking to newspersons at the sidelines of a conference. The Bill envisages setting up of a regulatory authority for the coal sector. It was referred to the Group of Ministers by the Cabinet last year.
The ministerial panel was asked to make recommendations on its powers and functions.
Earlier in his address at the inaugural session of the 7th International Exhibition & Conference on Power Sector being jointly organised by the Ministry of Power and FICCI, Jaiswal, said that in order to fast track development of coal blocks in the country, the Government has proposed to develop some of the Coal India Ltd blocks through mine developer and operator (MDO).
“Modalities are being worked out in this regard,” he said.
He said that efforts are being made to enhance exploration for enlarging resource base for coal. Against an actual growth of 3.8 per cent achieved in the XI Plan, CIL has been asked to target a growth of 7 per cent during the XII Plan to ensure more availability of coal through domestic resources.
Regarding import of coal and price pooling, the Minister said that a proposal to import coal with pooling of prices is suggested to bind over the current shortage situation but this needs to be studied in depth for a considered view as a number of state governments have expressed their reservation on the proposal.
The supplies of coal in the recent times are falling short of projected demand due to domestic production capacity constraints on various accounts and the Government is taking all the necessary measures in addressing these issues and improving the situation.
To achieve the projected growth in production a number of new projects are planned to be taken up in PSU coal companies and a number of coal blocks have been allocated to various private and government companies and few more are in the pipeline for allocation, the Minister said adding “Besides, supplies would also need to be made good through imports”
Our efforts to acquire coal equity abroad have thus far resulted in acquiring two coal blocks in Mozambique by state-owned CIL while private companies have been successful in acquiring the assets in countries such as Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, and South America etc. “We need to be aggressive in this regard from long term energy security point of view,” he said.
With a view to infusing competition in the coal sector and to review the existing institutional mechanism, it has been proposed to take up the exercise of restructuring of CIL for which expression of interest has been floated by the Ministry for identifying suitable consultants, Jaiswal said.