Indian power ministry has reviewed the status of non-lapsing of short supplies of coal, which has been examined and worked upon by an Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) formed to address the stressed thermal power projects.
The approval regarding non-lapsing of short supplies of coal was carried out under the amendments made in the SHAKTI policy, and duly sanctioned in Mar’19.
The underlying policy which assures coal supplies to the power plants against advance payment states that “If the power plant fulfills its obligations limited to making payments as due to coal companies, payments to Indian Railways as due and making arrangements for unloading of the rakes at its plants.
Then, any short supply of coal for the month, either on the part of coal company or on account of unavailability of rakes, may not lapse and be carried over to the subsequent months up to a maximum period of 3 months.”
In this regard, the IMC has recommended following methodology for implementation:
(a) the undelivered coal quantity would not lapse up to 3 months in case advance payment has been made by the TPP. (E.g. undelivered quantity of January will be carried forward up to April).
(b) Program for coal would be given by the TPP in two parts i.e. fresh program for the next month and program for undelivered quantity of the previous month.
(i) fresh program for the month will be submitted by the last working date of the preceding month.
(ii) program for undelivered quantity will be submitted within first three days of the succeeding month.
(c) Short supply of coal (undelivered quantity of the previous 3 months for which advance payment has already been made) would be adjusted first against the supply to be made in the current month.
The adjustment of the short supply quantity would be done starting from oldest to latest months (i.e. for the supply to be made in July, the short supply for the month of April shall be adjusted first, then for May and June).
Balance quantity of supply made in the current month would then pertain to the remaining amount left after adjusting the short supplies of previous months.
The committee has advised both Indian Railways and coal companies to frame/revise the guidelines mentioned in the methodology, which would be issued upon approval of the competent authority.
SHAKTI Scheme:
On 22 May’17, Ministry of Coal had came out with a new policy for allocation of coal linkages in a transparent manner for power sector consumers, under the name of ‘Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala Transparently in India’ (SHAKTI).
Till 31 Mar’19, 5 FSAs (Fuel Supply Agreements) have been signed with TPPs having pending LoA (letter of assurance), while another 5 FSAs were granted on recommendations of power ministry.
In addition, Linkage auction under the depicted rules of SHAKTI policy was conducted in Sep’17, whereby 27.18 MnT of annual coal linkage has been booked by 10 successful bidders.
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