New Delhi: With almost a month-and-a-half remaining before FY22 draws to an end, Coal India Limited (CIL), as of February 16, has already raced ahead of the total coal despatch of FY21, the coal miner said on Friday. CIL has supplied 575 MT of coal during this period, improving its annual despatch of 574.5 MT in financial year 2021, a statement said. Till February 16 of the current fiscal, CIL's despatch to power plants of the country was up at 468.4 MT compared to 381 MT of the corresponding period last year, posting 23 percent growth.
The 9.4 percent growth in power generation till December FY22 was the highest in a decade on the back of a strong post-Covid economic revival. And coal imports have been down to a nine-year low due to a sharp increase in international coal prices. This put the onus on CIL to step in with increased supplies to ensure uninterrupted power generation which it did, said Coal India.
Amid wild fluctuations, the total coal-based power generation went up sharply to around 11.2 percent in FY22 till January, against comparable period last year, after a decline during the previous two years. To handle such volatility in demand is difficult for a mining company but CIL managed to do so with increased volume supplies, said the coal miner.
CIL has ensured higher availability of coal from its end at a time when the domestic coal-based generation has spiked up by 17 percent till January FY22, it added.
As of February 3, nearly two months before the current fiscal's closing, CIL despatched 446.5 MT of coal to the power sector, exceeding the total quantity that it supplied to the utilities during entire FY21, which was 445 MT.
CIL aims to scale up its supplies to the regulated power sector to 548 MT by the end of FY22 as per the projection of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA). This would mean a whopping 103 MT volume jump compared to the power sector's despatch of 445 MT in FY21, said Coal India.
CIL's average despatch to non-power sector is 3.32 lakh tonnes per day so far in the current fiscal which is the normal average. With sufficient coal availability and production looking up, meeting the average despatch of the non-regulated sector will not be an issue.
CIL's current coal production is at 2.3 MT/day and expected to scale up to 2.6 MT/day and above in the high yielding month of March.
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