Coal ministry blames power producers for shortage
Problems of coal shortage faced by the power producers are because of their own shortcomings and there is no shortage of availability of coal in the country, said minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia. “The power plants should have coal stock for 21 days, but none of the plants maintain it. Therefore from time to time we talk of shortage of coal,” Bagrodia said. He added, for the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plants, which are operating at relatively high Plant Load Factor (PLF), Coal India Ltd (CIL) has achieved 106% of dispatch target between April-July 2008. CIL dispatched 34.92 mt of coal during April-July to NTPC against the target of 32.5 mt. The minister’s statement comes after media reports that NTPC’s plants are facing the threat of closure due to paucity of coal. “Our ministry did not get even a single complaint from the public sector unit about coal shortage.” Bagrodia added that he would take up the matter with power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. Bagrodia said coal is being supplied to regulated power utilities, whose present installed capacity is about 68,950 mw. The overall supply to power sector from CIL has shown a growth of 3.4% during April-July, 2008 over the same period last year. Overall, both CIL and Singareni Collieries Company Limited have achieved 98.7% of AAP dispatch targets to power sector utilities, Bagrodia said. The minister said the coal sector was committed to keep inflationary pressures at bay and CIL and its subsidiaries would not resort to any increase in prices of coal. The premium of 5%, which was levied on coal sold through the e-auction route, has been scrapped and the floor price would be the minimum bid price. Prices of coal across various grades range from Rs 450 a tonne to Rs 2,200 a tonne. The last time prices of coal were revised by 10 % in 2007.
