The government on Saturday refuted the news of the coal shortage in the country and claimed there is no shortage as Coal India alone is supplying around 3.4 lakh tonnes per day to the non-power sector (NPS).

The Union Coal Ministry said the dispatch to NPS during the current financial year is at 101.7 Million Metric Tonnes (MT), which is 8.2 % more than compared to 94 MT in the last fiscal. Coal India (CIL) also has sufficient buffer stock to further increase supply to the non-power sector, the Ministry said.

Coal India Limited (CIL) is currently supplying around 3.4 Lakh tonnes of coal per day to the non-power sector (NPS) which is the company’s average supply to this segment. With more than 37 million tonnes (MTs) of coal at its pitheads, CIL aims to further step up supplies to this sector.

According to a senior officer of the Coal Ministry, growth in supplies to NPS customers was at a higher rate than the supplies to the power sector during this period. In the first three quarters of the last fiscal year, dispatch to the NPS segment was 105 MTs.

The Ministry said the coal intake for the major part of FY’21, witnessed demand disruption caused by Covid, as a result, Coal India scaled up supplies to the NPS segment. Further, Non-Power Sector also opted to lift higher volumes of coal as the e-auction of Coal India sale was capped at a notified price for the first half of FY 2021, the Ministry said.

The NPS imports around 170 MTs of coal in any given fiscal year for blending with domestic coal. But this fiscal year, the unusually high international coal prices proved to be a hindrance for importing requisite quantities giving rise to a scarcity of coal at their end, the Ministry said.

This year has witnessed an unprecedented surge in power generation, the growth rate being the highest in a decade, necessitating the need to meet the power sector’s coal demand as a national priority. “Riding on robust economic recovery, total coal-based power generation till January’22 of the fiscal in progress grew by 11.2% on year-on-year comparison,” the officer said. To meet the increasing demand, domestic coal-based generation units have increased their capacity by 17 % during the same period, he added.

In sharp contrast, power generation by14 imported coal-based power plants were down by 48 percent during April-January 2021-22. Meeting the resultant generation gap fell on domestic coal-based generators requiring enhanced indigenous coal supply.