India’s domestic coal production has shown impressive growth during the past few years and this rise in output has helped the nation to check the import of fossil fuel considerably, the government said on Friday.
In the current financial year, the country’s total coal production recorded a more than 16% rise to 698.25 million tonnes (MT) during the period from April 2022 to January 2023, as compared to 601.97 MT during the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
In this period, Coal India Ltd.’s (CIL) production has also gone up by about 15.23% to 550.93 MT from 478.12 MT, the coal ministry said in a statement.
The increase in domestic coal production has helped the country curb import to a large extent in face of sharp increase in coal demand arising due to continuous rise in power consumption.
The country’s total coal production has increased from 730.87 MT in 2019-20 to 778.19 MT in 2021-22, achieving a growth of 6.47%.
The coal ministry has fixed the target of 1.31 BT (billion tonnes) for FY25 and the same is likely to go up to 1.5 BT by FY30.
The ministry has been actively engaging with various state governments and central government agencies both for starting new coal mines and also for increasing coal production in the currently operational mines.
As a result of such initiatives, production from captive and commercial coal mines has increased to 93.22 MT in April 2022 to January 2023 period of FY 22-23 from 71.31 MT in the same period of FY 21-22, showing a growth of more than 30%, the statement said.
