Coal mining: Focus on evacuation to lift output levels

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.