Coal India Ltd (CIL) is expected to carry out a record offtake of 581 million tonne coal in 2017-18 (April-March) due to improved cooperation between the mining company and Indian Railways, the Ministry of Coal said .
“With the continuing cooperation from Railways, CIL is expected to achieve record offtake of about 581 mt (million tonne) during the current fiscal, registering a growth of 7 per cent,” a Ministry statement said.
It added: “Having realised the potential for moving over 340 rakes of coal (in a day), increased thrust is being made to carry forward the momentum to bring the power sector out of criticality and to meet the demands of other sectors of consumers.”
On March 28, the state-run company recorded the highest offtake in a day, of 2 million tonnes and the Indian Railways helped movement of 344.5 coal rakes the day, surpassing the target of 342 rakes, the Ministry said.
The synergy between Coal India and Indian Railways has improved in order “to overcome the crisis faced by thermal power plants from the month of July 2017”, it said.
“The daily average despatch to power plants during the last 10 days has also crossed the target of 1.4 million tonnes,” it said. “As a result, the stocks at the power stations’ end which had plunged to the lowest level of about 7 mt during October 2017 has now improved to 16 mt, despite rapid increase in coal consumption.”