KOLKATA: Poor availability of railway rakes is acting as a major impediment to Coal India’s achievement of sales targets. Officials fear that it would lead to these remaining unmet and addition of fresh volumes to already high stocks.
“We have been asking for 236-237 rakes a day but the Indian Railways is not in a position to supply that many. All subsidiaries of CIL have been receiving a total of 220 rakes a day. If we would have received the additional 16-17 rakes a day, then we could have met the year’s target,” said a senior CIL official.
The company’s total production target for the current year has been set at 507 million tonnes (mt), while the sales target was fixed at 520 mt. By the end of February, CIL was short of target for the year by 78 mt. In February, when production is generally at its highest, the company produced 48 mt. However, due to lack of rakes, it managed to sell only 43 mt. It is expected that in March, the company will be able to produce similar volumes of coal. Sales is likely to hover at the 43 mt achieved in February.
The CIL official said that the railways has been supplying the number of rakes it had promised at the beginning of the year. CIL has been asking for more rakes due to overall increased demand for rakes from all sectors.
The coal major clocked a near 7% production growth in April 2014 to February 2015, while sales growth fell 3.5% mainly on account of congestion in railway infrastructure and fewer rakes than needed. It is likely that the company will see its coal stocks rise due to production outstripping sales during the year. CIL missed both its production and sales target every month between May 2014 and February 2015. The backlog as a result has touched 70 mt for production and 78 mt for sales.
The highest volume of coal produced in any single month was February 2014, when the output reached 47 mt. The highest sales was in January hit 44 mt.
In February, the company lost some 1.5 mt of production and 2 mt of sales because of a two-day strike called by the unions. Extreme heat in summer and excessive rain during monsoon hit production and sales. In summer, the Orissa government didn’t let miners work and barred loading of coal on rakes in the afternoons.
