Union Minister of State (I/C) for Coal, Power, New & Renewable Energy and Mines, Shri Piyush Goyal, while giving a written reply to question in Lok Sabha today, said that the total coal imports have been consistently reducing over the last three years. In 2016-17, as on 31.12.2016, the figure has reduced to 144.87 MT as compared to 146.12 MT for the same period in 2015-16. Further, the total coal imports in 2015-16 was 199.9 MT as compared to 217.8 MT in 2014-15. Further, the Minister said that in the power sector, the coal being imported for blending with domestic coal has been decreasing. The quantity of coal imported by the power utilities in 2015-16 decreased to 37.1 MT from 48.5 MT in 2014-15. In 2016-17, up to 31.01.2017, the power utilities have imported 16.6 MT coal as against import of 31.6 MT during the same period in 2015-16. For 2016-17, estimated coal demand on provisional basis has been assessed to be 884.87 MT, of which respective demand of steel, cement and captive power including fertilizer sector, has been assessed to be 56.62 MT, 34.37 MT & 91.11 MT respectively, the Minister added.
While informing about the coal stocks in the country Shri Goyal said that in 2016-17, there has been decline of coal stocks at pitheads of CIL as well as at Power Plants, as shown below:
Year
Coal Stocks (MT)
2014-15 2015-16 2016-17
(as on 05.03.17)
Pit Head (CIL)
53.47 57.64 56.33
Thermal Power Plants 26.10 38.87 26.48
Shri Goyal further informed that to enhance production from the coal mines and introduce the state of the art technology along with global best practices, 39 projects (9 projects post 2014) with Surface miners, Powered Support Long Wall (PSLW) and Continuous Miner (CMs) have been sanctioned and implemented in CIL as an ongoing process till now. – See more at: http://orissadiary.com/ShowBussinessNews.asp?id=72781#sthash.Ip824UiV.dpuf
