Government has set the 2016-17 coal production target for Coal India at 598 million tonnes, Coal secretary, Anil Swarup told NDTV Profit in an exclusive interview.
''We are targeting a production of 598 million tonnes for FY17, and should be able to hit 535 million tonnes this year''.
He acknowledged that the target for 2015-16 was very high at 550 million tonnes and with just a few days left for the current financial year to get over, the total production in the current year should be 535 million tonnes, 15 million tonnes short of the original target.
The government has a vision to produce a billion tonnes by 2020. While the production has been increasing continuously there has not been many takers of coal. Coal demand has remained subdued, it did not increase as per the increase in the production.
Coal India has achieved 9.2% increase in production this year so far vs an average of 1-3% production growth between 2009-10 & 2013-14. Coal production grew by 6.7% in 2014-15.
At a time when the demand for coal remains weak, the government believes that there is still scope for more supply. The government now wants to reduce the imports of coal even further.
The coal secretary said that ''Coal production should go up further, there is a lot of space occupied by the imported coal''. Till now this year the coal imports have come down by almost 15%.
With floating bonds under Uday scheme, the government expects discoms to break-even soon. The government is confident that 'UDAY' scheme will further help boost demand for coal.
Going forward, in 2016-17 improving the quality of coal will be high on government's agenda.
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