An Inter – Ministerial Committee (IMC) has been constituted in the Ministry of Coal for the purpose of coal import substitution

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An Inter – Ministerial Committee (IMC) has been constituted in the Ministry of Coal for the purpose of coal import substitution.

The Representatives from Ministry of Power (MoP), Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Shipping, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Steel, Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME), Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT), Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Coal Companies and Ports are members of this IMC. 

This Committee provides a platform for discussions on a larger forum with the Administrative Ministries so as to guide them to encourage the coal consumers of their respective sector to eliminate imports of coal. Nine meetings of the IMC have been held so far. IMC has also directed for development of an Import Data System by Ministry of Coal to enable the Ministry to track the imports of coal. Coal India Limited (CIL) has also started an online portal to register the requests of coal consumers willing for import substitution of coal.

In addition to it, the following steps have also been taken to reduce coal imports:

• The Annual Contracted Quantity (ACQ) of the Power Plants have been increased upto 100% of the normative requirement in those cases where the ACQ was earlier reduced to 90% of normative.
• CIL has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) under Import Substitution for about 12 Million Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) coal with the Power plants linked with CIL. Accordingly, CIL has allocated 9.53 Million Tonne (MT) coal to the power plants till February’ 2021 under Import Substitution.
• Reserve/floor price across all e-auction schemes was kept to notified price till 2^nd quarter (earlier by 10-30% above the notified price) with a view to maximize coal utilization by the consumers.
• Increase in the dispatch to Non-regulated Sector (NRS) consumers in the current Financial Year (Apr-Feb’21) to 37.8 rakes/day compared to 28.4 rakes/day last year with a growth of 33%. Total dispatch to NRS registered a growth of 12% as compared to same period of last year.
• Facility of Usance LC (Letter of Credit) payment mechanism in addition to the existing Irrevocable Revolving Letter of Credit (IRLC) payment was introduced to help the consumer avail credit facility from bank.
• A special Spot auction scheme was started for the coal importers including the traders, so as to enable coal import substitution. CIL has offered about 32.7 MT coal under this window out of which 7.53 MT coal was booked by the consumer/Importers/Traders.

This information was given by Union Minister of Coal Shri Pralhad Joshi in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Monday.