Coal India Ltd (CIL) pursuant to the directive of Supreme Court has decided to carry out next phase of auction for the coal extracted from Meghalaya state.
The latest round of auction scheduled on 17 May ’20 would include nearly 55,154 t coal offered from various depots located in East Jaintia Hills, West Khasi Hills, South West Khasi Hills.
Interestingly, this is the third phase of auctions which came into light after Supreme Court instructed the state administration to hand over the illegally extracted coal to CIL for carrying out the auction and deposit the funds with the government.
Detail of lot put up for auction on 17 May ’21:
Timeline of Auction:
After formulation of comprehensive plan prepared by Department of Mining and Geology Meghalaya, coal for subsequent sale via auction was transferred to the designated depot and stacked grade-wise.
The first round of auction carried out on 6 Apr ’21 witnessed offer quantity of 53,888 t from Depot no. 4 comprising of G15 and G17 grades.
Reserve price for G15 and G17 grade coal lots was fixed at INR 5558/t and INR 4850/t respectively as per the directive of NGT committee. However, the auction event turned out to be a dull affair as no bids were recorded due to the higher prices.
Learning from the past experience, reserve coal price was revised taking into account 40% of the LC (Letter of Credit) value for export to Bangladesh which as per the state stands at INR 5400/t.
Accordingly, it was decided to fix reserve price for coal at INR 2160/t and maximum price to be set as per the grade of coal based on recommendation of Mining and Geology Department and officials of DMR.
Second round of auction was held on 29 Apr ’21, where in addition to the residual lot from Depot no 4, additional coal from Depot no. 6, 9 and 10 was also included at the revised price. For lower coal grades (G8, G15 and G17) reserve price was fixed at INR 2160/t, while price for higher grades was increased in accordance with the GCV value.
The latest round to be held on 17 May ’21 would feature residual coal volume which went unsold from the previous round of auction at the same prevailing reserve price.
With the ongoing sale of coal, the state government is expected to garner a royalty cess and GST worth INR 21 Crore. At the same time, it would also cater the premium quality coal requirement of customers in the region who have been missing the services of NEC after the CIL mining unit has failed to resume operation since last year.
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