Coal India plans to constitute panel for overseas mines acquisition

In order to meet the rising domestic coal requirements, Coal India has planned to form a panel of consultants which would help it in acquiring, developing and operating coal mines overseas. Coal India is eyeing coal assets abroad to meet the domestic demand. Earlier, Coal Ministry had stated that acquisition of coal mines overseas should be done in an aggressive manner to meet India’s rising energy requirements. Taking forward its plans to acquire overseas mines, CIL had recently invited bids for the third phase of drilling in the African nation. It had earlier invited bids from bankers and interested parties for acquiring assets abroad. India, despite being world’s third-largest producer of coal and fifth largest in terms of reserves, has failed to keep pace with increasing domestic demand. Indian domestic coal demand is around 35 percent higher than domestic supply, resulting into a high deficit of which a huge part is being met by costly imports from Indonesia, South Africa and Australia. The country had imported a record 171 MT coal last financial year to meet domestic requirements. Meanwhile, to boost the domestic coal production, the government has planned to invite bids from private players to start coal mining in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode in the country, which would also end the monopoly of public sector unit Coal India.