India’s domestic coal production has shown impressive growth during the past few years.  Coal production has increased from 730.87 MT (Million Ton) in 2019-20 to 778.19 MT in 2021-22, achieving a growth of 6.47%. The rising trend of coal production has further gained pace in the current financial year 2022-23 and country’s total coal production has recorded an impressive growth of more than 16% with production of 698.25 MT during the period from April’2022 to Janaury’2023 as compared to 601.97 MT during the corresponding period of the previous year. In this period, Coal India Limited (CIL) own production has also gone up by about 15.23% to 550.93 MT from 478.12 MT. The increase in domestic coal production has helped the country curb import to a large extent in face of sharp increase in coal demand arising due to continuous rise in power consumption.

The Coal Ministry has fixed the target of 1.31 BT (Billion Ton) for FY 25 and the same is to go up to 1.5 BT by FY30. The Ministry has been actively engaging with various State Government and Central Government agencies both for starting new coal mines and also for increasing coal production in the currently operational mines. As a result of such initiatives, production from captive and commercial coal mines has increased to 93.22 MT in April’2022 to Janaury’2023 period of FY 22-23 from 71.31 MT in same period of FY 21-22, showing a growth of more than 30%.

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AKN/RKP