The Coal India board has approved a non-coking coal price hike for both power and non-power consumers.
The price increase is expected to push the miner’s revenue up by Rs 1,956 crore for the remaining period of the current fiscal. Effective from Tuesday, the revision is projected to lead to an incremental annual revenue of Rs 6,421 crore.
“The board has approved revision of non-coking coal prices with effect from January 9. This will be applicable to all the subsidiaries of Coal India including NEC for regulated and non regulated sectors,” the miner said in a late night filing on Monday.
“Due to this revision, Coal India will earn approximately an incremental revenue of Rs 1,956 crore for the balance period of the current fiscal (2017-18) and the projected annual incremental revenue would be Rs 6,421 crore,” an official said.
Reacting to the price revision, Coal Consumers’ Association of India’s Secretary General Subhasri Chaudhuri told IANS: “Coal consumers have no alternative but to bear the brunt of the price hike.
“Of late, Coal India’s subsidiaries have increased peripheral charges like surface transport charges (for transporting coal from pit heads to siding) in the zero-three km slab. The miner had also introduced evacuation facility charges at Rs 50 per tonne from December. However, in the latest revision, the miner reduced prices for some grades of coal.”
According to sources, the price hike across various coal grades range between 22 per cent on the higher side to 3 per cent on the lower side. In some grades of coal, the prices were revised downward.
Following the price revision, Coal India’s shares closed at 5.63 per cent higher at BSE on Tuesday, while the Sensex was up 0.26 per cent at 34,443.19 points.
According to Coal India official, the miner is likely to introduce a new pricing mechanism for coal which would be linked to quality and the new mechanism is expected to be implemented in the next few months.
Under the new mechanism, the prices would be computed on every unit of gross calorific value, he said.
In the last month, the miner had introduced evacuation facility charges at Rs 50 per tonne for despatch of coal except despatch through rapid loading arrangement and as a result, the company was expected to generate approximately an additional revenue of Rs 2,500 crore for the full year and approximately Rs 800 crore for rest of the current fiscal.
The price of thermal grade coal with gross calorific value (GCV) of 3,100 kcal/kg to 4,300 kcal/kg for supply to power sector has been increased by about 15-18 per cent. This along with the levy of evacuation charges of Rs 50 per million tonnes is estimated to increase the cost of generation for coal-based power plants by about 13-15 paise per unit, as per rating agency ICRA estimates.
“Given that coal based generators with an automatic pass through of fuel costs account for about 60 per cent of the total power procured by discoms and assuming a partial pass-through by other IPPs (Independent Power Producers) with competitively-bid PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) which account for balance, this translates into about 9 paise per unit increase in power procurement cost for discoms on an all India basis,” agency’s Group Head and Senior Vice President Sabyasachi Majumdar said.
“In turn, assuming the average AT&C loss level at around 23 per cent in the country, we estimate the impact on cost of power supply per unit sold and retail tariffs (assuming full pass through by state regulators) at around 11 paisa per unit or about 2 per cent tariff hike,” he added.
In January 2017, the miner’s subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) increased coking coal prices by about 20 per cent and its another subsidiary Central Coalfields too had hiked its prices.