The country's largest coal miner Coal India aims to liquidate at least 18 million tonne of inventory in the current financial year, which will bring down its stock pile to 40 million tonne by March, said S Narsing Rao, chairman, Coal India.
The state-owned company's stock piles had reach as high as 70 million tonne in the beginning of FY13. Coal India's fourth quarter (January-March) consolidated net profit rose slightly higher-than-expected 34.9 percent year-on-year to Rs 5,414 crore. Its sales grew by 2.5 percent to Rs 19,904.5 crore from Rs 19,419 crore Y-o-Y, which too came in marginally above forecast. Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview Q: Two part question, firstly e-auction volumes, that's in fact up about 1.2 percent on a year-on-year basis, but down 19 percent for the Q4. So, what really is the reason for this disparity?
A: That was only in the last quarter you are talking about, but overall year the reduction has been only about 1.75 million tonnes against 50 odd million tonnes. So, there has been a slight reduction in the volume and realisation also was down by about 2.01 percent.
Essentially, two major reasons, one is you are all aware that the international prices have been under declining trend in the past one year.
Secondly, our own increased supply has impacted on the demand-supply situation in the country, together that’s a result. Q: What was the total inventory liquidated in fiscal 13 and also what’s the total inventory liquidation target going ahead for fiscal 14 as well?
A: FY13, we liquidated 13 million tonnes, from 70 odd levels it came down to 57.6 or so, 13 million tonnes minus.
This year we are hoping that we should be able to liquidate about 18 million tonnes from the 57 level. So, it should come down to 40 or little lower than 40, end of March 31.
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