Coal India unlikely to meet its output target for FY'14

State-owned Coal India is unlikely to meet its output target of 482 million tonnes for the current fiscal due to factors like production loss after Cyclone Phailin and an agitation by contract workers in  subsidiary.

"At the current production rate, the shortfall in production is likely to be more than 10 million tonnes (MT)," a company source said. The source added that that achieving the target looks difficult, but the company is trying its best.

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Coal India Ltd (CIL) suffered a production loss of over one million tonne due to shutdown of mining activities in Talcher Coalfields in Odisha. CIL had earlier this month said the production target for the current fiscal looks challenging. This followed Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal asking the nstate-owned company to ensure that the output target for FY 2014 is met.

Mining activities at Talcher Coalfields in Odisha, including coal transportation, came to a halt on November 29 following violence by a group of labourers protesting the arrest of some of their colleagues at Jagannath area in Angul district.

The mining activities in around six coal blocks (in Talcher Coalfields) of Coal India subsidiary Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd were affected due to violence. According to a CIL official, the PSU suffered production loss in October due to Cyclone Phailin, which affected the key coal producing states of Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

Jaiswal had earlier said that though production at CIL had been hit in October due to Cyclone Phailin. CIL, which accounts for over 80 percent of the domestic production, contributed 452.5 MT of coal in the previous financial year compared with the target of 464 MT.