Rejecting the coal ministry?s views of a logistic problem in coal transport due to unavailability of railway rakes, the railway ministry has said that the supply of rakes for coal loading has been increasing constantly.
According to railway ministry data, coal loading during 2011-12 (up to November) for various sectors, including steel plants, thermal power plants and other public uses, has increased by 18% over the year ago period. Even month-wise, railway ministry official claimed, the supply of rakes has been increasing significantly. ?Though there was a fall in supply of rakes in August, September and October, primarily due to low coal production, the supply has increased from 169 rakes during December 2010 to 187 per day in December 2011, a growth of over 10%,? a railway ministry official said.
Coal India?s (CIL) production has gone up from 360.19 million tonnes (mt) in 2006-07 to 431.32 mt in 2010-11, registering a growth of 4.5%. In comparison to that, the railway ministry official said, coal loading of the railways has increased from 313.9 mt to 420.21 mt, a growth of 7.56%.
This is in contrast to coal ministry?s stand in the recent report of the Committee on Estimates for 2011-12, where it pointed out that the unavailability of railways rakes was one of the reasons for poor supply of coal to power stations. ?The average growth in coal production is about 5% whereas growth in availability of railway wagons for coal movement has been a little more than 2% in last five years. This has resulted in an accumulation of pithead stock for consecutive years and had been almost 70 mt in the beginning of the current year in spite of the demand-supply gap,? the coal ministry said in the report.
The railway ministry official said the pit stock needs to be brought to the rail head by the coal companies before the actual supply begins. ?So, if the company is not able to transport coal from the pithead to rail head, there is no way only pit stock can be viewed in isolation for gauging the performance of rail dispatch,? he added.
The official said that because of the lower production by CIL, railway rakes were lying idle. Coal production during April to October 2011 was 8.9% below the target. ?In August, 68 rakes per day were idle, while in September, October and November, there were 228, 117 and 11 idle rakes, respectively, and weren’t put to any use because of the production cut,? the official said.
