New Delhi: In July, Coal India Limited (CIL) has achieved its highest-ever coal off-take, production and over burden removal (OBR) since the company's inception 46 years ago, posting growths of 16.7 percent, 14.1 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively, in these performance parameters, said an official statement on Monday. The company also clocked a robust 30.7 percent growth in supplies to the power sector during April-July period as there was a whopping increase of 39 million tonnes (MT) in despatch to the power sector over the same period a year ago.
With the country's power consumption gradually inching towards pre-pandemic levels, CIL's off-take to coal-fired thermal power plants went up sharply to 166.3 MTs during the referred period, up from 127.2 MTs during the same period last fiscal.
Coal off-take to power sector for July at 39 MTs registered 17 percent growth compared to 33.3 MTs that the company supplied during July 2020. CIL's total coal off-take also increased by a staggering 46.7 MTs during the first four months of the fiscal in progress, registering a strong 28.4 percent growth. The total volume of the coal supplied was 210.8 MTs during April-July compared to 164 MTs of the corresponding period a year ago.
July's total supplies at 50.5 MTs expanded by 7.2 MTs in a month. Compared to the coal off-take of 43.3 MTs in July 2020 the growth is 16.7 percent.
CIL's coal supply accounted approximately for three-fourth of the country's total coal-based power generation of 82.119 Billion Units (BU) during July, which includes generation through imported coal. If power generation through only domestic coal is considered, then CIL's share would be even higher.
The state-owned PSU coal miner came back strongly with an output of 42.6 MTs in July, with an increase of 5.3 MT in volume as compared to July 2020 (37.3 MTs). The growth was 14.1 percent. The double-digit growth of July helped the company push up its progressive production growth to 5.2 percent at the end of July, which at the closure of the first quarter was 2.4 percent. For April-July period, Coal India produced 166.6 MTs of coal as compared to 158.4 MTs in the corresponding period a year ago, registering a jump of 8.2 MTs in absolute terms.
The record OBR for July was 91 million cubic metres (M.Cu.M) against 89 M.Cu.M of last July. CIL's efforts to liquidate its pithead stock resulted in a reduction of 43.4 MTs at the end of July, backed by increased appetite for coal. The company still has a buffer of 55.8 MT stock to meet any exigency in coal demand.
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