Thursday, May 19,
The power ministry is making plans to temporarily terminate the spot sale of coal on e-auction.* The move is to utilize the huge pile-up of coal stocks in Coal India’s mines.
A high level meeting is to be held to discuss the issue of coal shortages and it will be attended by ministers in charge of coal, power and finance.
“We will request the prime minister to see that the coal requirement for thermal power stations are met. We have already suggested stoppage of e-auction and liquidate pithead stocks as temporary measures. These will be taken up for discussions at the meeting,” said a senior ministry official.
Coal India has sold around 11% of its production of 431 million tonnes through e-auction at an average price of Rs 1,582/MT in 2009-10. The company has allotted raw coal worth 16 per cent of its total sales through e-auction in 2009-10.
Coal India’s chairman N C Jha had recently that pithead stocks of over 70 million tonnes have been piled up in its mines primarily owing to limited availability of railway rakes. Moreover, issues such as environment clearances, land allocation coupled and capacity constraints of the Coal India Ltd (CIL) have restricted the availability for small players.
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