India: CIL’s coal production up 4% m-o-m in Jan ’21

Country’s largest coal miner- Coal India Ltd (CIL) attained a new-high in terms of monthly coal production in January but could not prevent its output from falling on the y-o-y owing to high pit-head stock.

Coal production increased 4% m-o-m to 60.47 mn t in Jan ’21 against 58.3 mn t in Dec ’20, however, snapping a five-month growth streak it registered a decline of 4% y-o-y from 63.11 mn t in Jan ’20.

Excessive coal stock at mines has been a major challenge for the company as it aims to reduce the production deficit since Aug ’20. While, inventory level was successively brought down till Nov ’20, a slowdown in power demand has again reversed this trend.

Notably, CIL’s dispatch comprising majorly of coal supply to the power plant has noted a y-o-y drop for the past two months following which coal stock has moved up to a 5-month high of 66.39 mn t at the end of Jan ’21.

Subsidiary-wise coal production:

SECL emerged as the largest coal producing subsidiary ahead of MCL for the first-time in this fiscal. The company posted coal production of 15.54 mn t in Jan ’21 but its cumulative output is still lagging behind previous year total.

In fact, among the 8 coal producing units, only NCL and MCL have registered positive growth in coal production during the 10-month period. While, there was no production reported from NECL which has temporarily halted operations since Jun ’20.

Source: CIL | Quantity in Million Tonne

Given the sluggish demand, CIL has capped its annual coal production target to 660 mn t for this fiscal, of which 453.35 mn t has been produced during Apr ’20-Jan ’21. Although, power consumption rate has been soaring recently, the company would seek similar response from the non-power sector as well to attain the remaining volume.