Kolkata: State-run miner Coal India has seen a pick up in production as well as in land acquisition and green clearances boosting the prospects of achieving 1 billion tonne output target by 2020, a top official said today.
Coal India Ltd has already able to acquire 2,000 hectares of land and has received 41 environmental and forest clearances in the last eight months, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said, adding that its production has risen by 12 per cent in past two months.
"CIL needs to produce one billion tonne coal, if India is to fulfil its goal of 1.5 billion tonne coal production by 2020. Coal India only needs to concentrate in mining and as a Ministry we will take care of everything else," Swarup said.
"In the past two months, coal production growth was 12 per cent for Coal India and we hope we will able to achieve the target," he said.
These developments bring confidence for the billion tonne target for Coal India, Swarup said.
He said the already finalised mine-wise detailed plan for 908 million tonne had been prepared by CIL.
Reiterating that the government has no plans to nationalise Coal India, Swarup said CIL has a key role if India was to achieve its goal of 1.5 billion tonne production target by 2020.
Over the last few years, CIL has been finding it difficult to increase its production as lot of its projects were stalled due to delay in getting clearances from ministry of environment and forest.
As on March 31, around 200 proposals of Coal India were awaiting the green nod.
Swarup noted that coal evacuation was a major issue for CIL and said the government was working on three major new railway lines in the states of Jharkhand, Chattishgarh and Odisha, which have potential to evacuate 200-300 million tonne once ready by July 2018.
"Apart from the three new lines, government has identified 60 railway projects that will have an additional evacuation capacity of 100-120 million tonne," he added.