IPO may happen in next fiscal, says Coal India

Excerpts from Markets Midday on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS CBI probing Coal India officials for pilferage Divestment Secy: To sell shares in Coal India in FY11 Govt to mop up over Rs 24000 cr in FY10: Divestment Secy

Q: What have you been looking at in terms of acquisition plans, acquiring coal mines?

A: So far, we have been able to taste success in Mozambique that was through a bidding route. That is a 200 sq km coal bearing deposits where we are anticipating about a billion tonne of reserves, but it is unexplored. So we have to start with exploration and then once we explore, we will projectise the whole thing and then it gets into production. There are lots of logistic issues; the railway connectivity, the port capacity has to be augmented. Those are issues that collectively many players in that country are looking at, so we have to join them. So coal from that part is unlikely to come before another four-five years.

Other areas apart from that, where we have gone for strategic alliance, are Indonesia, USA, South Africa and Australia. USA is a distant country, but there if you get coal of high calorific value then the difference in freight rates is not a big bother.

Q: And yet you have lowered your output target for 2012, any specific reasons for that?

A: Basically it is because of delay in getting forest clearances, environmental clearances, so 17 of our projects, which were to contribute 101 million tonne in the 2011-12 target, are still yet to take off the ground. If they take off ground today, then they can possibly contribute around 47 million tonne, so we are clearly 54 million tonne down.

What we have tried to do, to reduce the impact of this, is we have preponed activities in most of the other projects and that is how we are raising the production from other projects by 20 million tonne and restricting the shortfall to 34 million tonne. That is how we are reducing it from 520 tonne to 486 tonne. But even at 486 tonne, it is 125 tonne more than the terminal year of 10th plan production and 125 million tonne is 52% more incremental production than what we achieved in the 10th plan.