Coal India Ltd (CIL) has requested the power plants to submit their demand for FY21, who are desirous of procuring domestic coal as substitution for the imported grade.
The matter of import substitution was recommended by Power Ministry who had earlier advised the generating companies to replace imports taken for blending purpose with indigenous coal, which is usually carried out to achieve quality attributes desirable at the plant end.
The objective of this provision is to bring down imports at a time when CIL has sufficient availability of coal suitable for power plants.
In order to avail the facility, CIL has asked the power plants to specify the preferred grade, company, source and mode for coal, which they desire to procure so as to replace with imported coal. Besides, it was also required for the power producers to submit an undertaking mentioning that they would not import/curtail import of coal in the FY21.
It is pertinent to note that plants are exhorted to import coal for blending purpose only when the requisite quantity and quality of domestic coal is not made available.
During FY20, power plants had imported 69.22 MnT coal, of which around one-third of the volume accounting to 23.75 MnT, was taken-up for blending purposes. Remaining quantity was procured by plants which are designed to run on imported coal.
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