Lack of railway links hampering CIL expansion
KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Coal India Limited (CIL) is unable to exploit 300-million tons of incremental production owing to lack of railway infrastructure, said chairperson S Narsing Rao.
“We have the capacity to increase supply by 300-million tons of coal, but a lack rail infrastructure for evacuation of the fuel means we will be able to increase our production by only 30-million tons over the next few years,” he stated.
Rao is referring to poor rail linkages in corridors such as the Tor-Shivpur-Kathotia in the North Karanpur coal block, in Jharkhand, Bhupdeopur-Korichhaapar in the Mand Raigarh coalfields, in Chhattisgarh, and the Barpali-Jharsuguda in IB Valley coalfield, Odisha.
The CIL chairperson’s concern over the inability to tap large production opportunities comes as the miner has taken up the issue of infrastructure with the recently constituted inter-Ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The committee was instituted specifically to monitor delays in large investments and to speed up implementation.
Issues such as land acquisition, environmental and forest clearances, rehabilitation of local populations and left wing extremist insurgencies are holding up about $1.2-billion worth of investments in railway projects across coal-bearing provinces in eastern and central India.
India faces a coal supply gap of about 190-million tons by 2016, which CIL could have bridged if rail infrastructure was in place. Instead, India will have to rely on imported coal. The country imported 146-million tons in 2012/13.
CIL, which accounts for about 80% of domestic supplies of coal, had been unable to meet production targets in the past few years. In 2012/13, CIL produced 453-million tons against a target of 464-million tons. For 2014/15, the miner has pruned its production target by 23-million tons to 507-million tons, against an earlier target of 530-million tons.
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