Coal import reduced by 2.59%

27 Mar 2017

The Centre on Thursday said that trend of fall in import of coal has continued in 2016-17. Increased production of coal imports have fallen from 217.78 Mte in 2014-15 to 199.88 Mte in 2015-16.

“For the period April 2016-January 2017, coal imports have reduced by 2.59 per cent as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year,” The Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines, Piyush Goyal, told Lok Sabha in a written reply.  He added that import of coal is, however, not solely dependent on the domestic production of coal; it depends  on other  factors  like  power  plant  designed  on  imported  coal and insufficient availability of coking coal of required grade.

A policy for allocation of coal to power sector is said to be under formulation.

As per International Energy Agency (IEA), India was the third largest producer and second largest importer of coal in 2014 in the World.

Source – bureaucracytoday.com