Coal India (CIL) has no plans for the demerger of Bharat Coking Coal ( BCCL) and Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI) before their listing, CIL chairman & managing director Pramod Agrawal said.

Addressing the state-run coal miners’ 48th annual general meeting, Agrawal said: “A part of their (BCCL and CMPDI) shares may get listed… We are working on the plan. All approvals are being obtained.”

CIL may divest up to 25% each in BCCL and CMPDI, sources said. CIL has a total of 10 subsidiaries — seven mining subsidiaries, two subsidiaries for pursuing renewable projects and one for mine planning and design.

Although the ministry has been asking the coal miner for a long time to initiate the listing of BCCL and CMPDI, the company has so far remained tight-lipped on the issue.

The CMD told shareholders that CIL was committed to increasing its supplies and production of coal to ensure that the country got power at “just prices”. But he hinted that a price increase was necessary, since all input costs of producing coal were going up.

“At a time when international coal prices are much higher, Coal India continues to supply its coal to the Indian consumers at highly competitive prices. There has been no price increase over the last four years,” Agrawal said. “The prices of diesel and explosives have gone up and wage revisions are underway,” he added.

Agrawal lauded the government for its renewable initiatives but told the shareholders that coal would continue to remain the mainstay fuel for electricity generation, given the current pattern of coal usage in the country.

CIL, he said, has been meeting 80% of the country’s dry fuel requirement for electricity generation. Of the country’s power output of 1,490 billion units in FY22, coal-based generation accounted for around 70%.

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Chances of renewables displacing coal in the near future are nil, he said, but added that CIL has already forayed into the renewables business. While the company was considering solar projects in a big way, pre-feasibility studies have been done during the year to set up integrated coal-to-chemical (C2C) plants utilising low-ash coal. The tendering process for the C2C plant was on. These plants are proposed to be located near mine heads of ECL, SECL and WCL to produce methanol, ammonia and ammonium nitrate, respectively.

CIL has plans to operationalise 14 mines through the engagement of mine developer-cum-operators (MDOs), having a proposed capacity of 165.58 million tonne per annum.

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The MDOs would significantly contribute to production in the coming years, he said. The company’s capital expenditure of Rs 15,401 crore in FY22 was the highest ever, clocking 15.94% annual growth.

In the current fiscal year, the company has set a target of Rs 16,500-crore capex in various projects.