State owned coal miner, Coal India Limited’s coal production dropped by 4 percent to 451.5 million tonne (MT) in the current financial year so far, as compared to 469.6 MT produced in the same period last fiscal.
Coal dispatch by the company declined 5 per cent in the April-January 2019-20 period and Offtake also declined 4.8 per cent to 473.3 million tonnes.
Taking into account Singareni Collieries Company Ltd and captive production, overall coal production in the country declined 2.2 percent to 555 million tonnes compared to 567 million tonnes produced during the same period last year. Coal offtake also witnessed a downfall of around 4 percent to 576 million tonnes.
Coal minister Pralhad Joshi said that this was largely due to heavy rainfall witnessed in the coal mining areas in the current year which was around 25 per cent more than the previous year. He also said that the production has started showing an upward trend since November 2019 and the country produced 69.6 MT in December 2019 and 74.8 MT in January 2020 which is highest ever produced in the last five years.
