Without action, 200MT shortfall in coal output in 12th Plan

The Coal Ministry today said the shortfall in domestic coal output in the country is likely to exceed 200 million tonne (MT) in the forthcoming Five-Year Plan (2012-17) period if proactive measures are not taken to bridge the demand-supply gap for the fossil fuel.

"Unless we facilitate new production through proactive measures, the gap in demand and supply from domestic sources would exceed 200 MT in the 12th Plan period," Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said on the sidelines of the Indian Coal Markets Conference organised here by mjunction services.

"We are on the threshold of the 12th Five-Year Plan, where the rise in production is expected to come from spillover projects of the 11th Plan and the new ones to be taken up in the 12th Plan," he added.

Earlier, the Planning Commission had also said the country's coal demand will go up to 1,000 million tonnes (MT) by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, necessitating about 200 MT of imports to bridge the shortfall in domestic output.

The production shortfall in the current fiscal, the final year of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12), is projected at 142 MT, with domestic output likely to amount to 554 MT.

The Planning Commission had also said that unless the widening demand-supply gap for coal was bridged, the projected shortfall of 200 MT would have to be met through imports.

The commission has estimated domestic production at 770 MT by 2017 on the basis of projected annual growth of around 7% in output.

As per a Planning Commission document, output in 2011-12 was expected to reach 680 MT, but the estimate was later scaled down to 630 MT in a mid-term appraisal by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It has now been revised downward even further to 554 MT.

The commission had also noted that demand for coal rose by about 8% a year during the 11th Plan and may rise by the same percentage during the next Five-Year Plan.

Coal India, which accounts for 80% of domestic production of coal, produced about 431 MT of coal in the last fiscal, almost the same output it recorded in 2009-10.