When the Union government announced in May an investment of Rs 50,000 crore to upgrade coal evacuation infrastructure in the country, it was acknowledging the anomaly of India meeting one-fourth of its consumption needs through imports despite having the fourth largest coal reserves in the world. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi found out during a review meeting for the sector last month, as much as 290 MT of coal could not be produced due to lack of evacuation infrastructure in the country – imports of coal stood at 243 MT in the last fiscal.
The move to create better evacuation infrastructure is part of the government’s target of producing 1 billion tonne of coal by 2025-26 – 729 MT was produced in FY20. In fact, the 1-bn-tn target was to be reached by 2020 and was pushed back only because of lack of infrastructure to evacuate such a quantity of the mineral. As is known, coal cannot be stocked at pitheads in large volumes owing to the fire hazard.
