Coal India Limited (CIL) on Wednesday reported a robust growth in production of 619.7 million tonnes till February in the current financial year, representing a 14.3 per cent growth over the same period last year.
This is also a 100 per cent achievement against the progressive target, and with a gain of 77.3 million tonnes, CIL is on track to breach its production target of 700 MT for FY’23, the miner said in a statement.
All subsidiaries of the company have logged growth over the previous year, and the Dhanbad-based Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) has already met its annual production target of 32 million tonnes on February 27.
CIL has consistently maintained a high double-digit production growth since the beginning of the fiscal, according to the statement.
“The company is aiming to augment the growth further in March’23 and any increase would have supplementary influence over the target,” a senior CIL official said.
CIL began its 700 million tonne target chase with an asking growth rate of 12.4 per cent and a senior official of the company stated that they are aiming to augment the growth further in March’23, with any increase expected to have a supplementary influence over the target.
Despite being a shorter month, CIL’s output in February’23 stood at 68.8 million tonnes, the highest for the month in any year till now, representing a growth of 7 per cent compared to February’22. CIL on average produced 1.37 lakh tonnes more coal per day in February.
CIL’s total supplies were at 630.5 million tonnes, a Y-O-Y increase of 30.6 million tonnes, during April’22 and February’23, posting a growth of 5.1 per cent compared to 599.8 MTs of the corresponding period last year.
Three of CIL’s subsidiaries – Bharat Coking Coal Ltd BCCL, Northern Coalfields Ltd and Mahanadi Coalfields – have surpassed their respective annual off-take targets.
Amid rising demand, CIL supplied 46 million tonnes more coal to the power sector in the eleven months of the current financial year, reaching 534 million tonnes, which represents a 9.4 per cent growth compared to 488 million tonnes in the same period last year.
The company remains confident of exceeding its annual target of 565 million tonnes of supply to the power sector by at least 20 million tonnes. Despite higher supplies to consuming sectors, CIL ended February’23 with 50 million tonne coal stock at its pitheads.