India Non-Coking Coal Imports Fall for Fourth Month in Row; Import from USA Down 30%

India’s thermal coal imports have decreased marginally by 1.47% month-on-month to 13.14 million tonnes (MnT) in August, as compared to 13.34 MnT in July, marking the fourth consecutive month of decline in imports, as per the latest vessel lineup data compiled by CoalMint Research.

On a year-on-year basis, however, the country’s cumulative non-coking coal imports have increased by 8.69% in the first eight months of this year till August – totaling 124.00 MnT during Jan-Aug’19 – as compared against a total of 114.09 MnT imported in the corresponding period last year.

India’s rising import dependence for securing coal supplies to its thermal power plants has reduced considerably over the past few months — as the supply shortage has gradually eased out with state-owned Coal India ramping up production levels.

Until recently though, prolonged coal shortages at power plants was driving up the country’s thermal coal imports as domestic supply consistently lagged behind demand, despite the government’s bloated assurances of achieving self-sufficiency in coal production.

India imported 19.62 million tonnes of non-coking coal in April this year, registering an astounding growth of almost 45%, against 13.54 MT in the same month last year.

Source: Vessel Line-up Data, CoalMint Research | Quantity in MnT

Country Wise India Non-Coking Coal Import in Aug’19:

A country wise breakup of the monthly import data reveals that the major proportion of India’s non-coking coal shipments continued to be originated from Indonesia, constituting the highest share of about 56%.

Further, Indonesian non-coking coal exports to India rose by 6.4% M-o-M to 7.82 MnT in Aug’19 against 7.35 MnT in Jul’19.

Contrarily, South African non-coking coal supplies to India fell by 10.4% M-o-M to 3.44 MnT in Aug’19 from 3.84 MnT in Jul’19.

Nevertheless, India’s non-coking coal imports from Australia rose by 4.0% M-o-M to 0.59 MnT in Aug’19 compared with 0.57 MnT in Jul’19.

More importantly, Indian thermal coal imports from USA dropped by a whopping 30.0% to 0.49 MnT in Aug’19, against 0.70 MnT in Jul’19.

India’s non-coking coal Imports from Russia rose by 74.0% M-o-M to 0.36 MnT in Aug’19, against 0.21 MnT in Jul’19; while imports from Colombia rose by 106.7% M-o-M to 0.34 MnT in Aug’19, against 0.17 MnT in Jul’19.

Source: CoalMint Research | Quantity in MnT

The following table presents a detailed breakup of the countries of origin during the month under review.

Source: CoalMint Research | Quantity in MT