Coal ministry denies any coal shortage

13 August 2008

Minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia has denied the claims made by the thermal power companies of an acute coal shortage.

Follwing the complaints of a coal scarcity, Bagrodia undertook a quick review of the production and dispatch performance of coal companies and issued a statement refuting that there was any shortage in the availability of coal.

Instead, the minister said the power companies were to blame for the shortage due to their own shortcomings.

''The power plants should have coal stock for 21 days, but none of the plants maintain it. Therefore from time to time we talk of shortage of coal,'' Bagrodia said.

Acording to the coal minstry's statement, CIL is required to supply a planned target of 292.50 million tonnes to power utilities in 2008-09, which is around 12 million tonnes more than what it supplied in 2007-08. It said that it had supplied 11 per cent more coal to the power sector in july than what it did last year.

The ministry said that the overall supply to power sector from Coal India Ltd has shown a growth of 3.4 per cent during April-July, 2008 over the same period last year. "Overall, both Coal India Limited and Singareni Collieries Company Limited have achieved 98.7 per cent of AAP dispatch targets to power sector utilities."