By December 2013, government expects a nine-member panel to submit report on devising public-private-partnership (PPP) framework in the coal mining sector.
In March 2013, the government set up the panel under
the chairmanship of Coal Secretary SK Srivastava to devise PPP framework.
Under the proposed PPP framework, Coal India (CIL) would rope in private players for implementing coal mining projects.
It may be recalled that the Union Budget 2013-14 envisaged a PPP policy in coal mining sector so as to reduce India’s increasing dependence on imported coal.
The committee, which has representatives from various ministries including Finance and Law and Justice, has met a couple of times since it was set up.
CIL, which accounts for over 80 per cent of domestic coal production, achieved an output of only 452.5 million tonne (mn t) last fiscal, missing the target of 464 mn t.
Earlier, the coal ministry said that CIL would miss the production target for the 2012-13 by 2-3 million tonne. It had attributed the shortfall to workers strike and certain other issues.
In 2013-14, government expects coal deficit in the country to be 140 million tonne, compared to 135 mn t in the previous fiscal. The shortfall would be met through imports.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.