Coal India (CIL) to replace the price notification issued on
1st Jan 2012 due to opposition from cement and power sectors which
are its customers.
Nirmal Chandra Jha, CIL's chairman said, a new notification
will soon replace the Jan. 1 notification on pricing delinking local prices
from international rates. This will effectively lower product prices.” He
also said coal prices would continue to be linked to the gross calorific value
of individual grades of the dry fuel.
CIL, the largest producer of coal in the country, introduced
a new pricing regime based on gross calorific value (GCV) on 1 January. The
mechanism has a band of 17 grades of coal, compared with seven under the
so-called useful heat value system.
This led to an increase in coal price and while CIL said the
higher rates were the result of the new system that was followed
internationally, users of the fuel alleged that the company had raised them in
an opaque manner.
Users said prices were up 5-20% and some said they were
surprised by the hike.
The new GCV based pricing mechanism will be reviewed
after Jan-Mar quarterly results, India's coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said.
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