Coal imports decline marginally to 20.18 MT in June

Helped by increased production and supplies by Coal India, the largest domestic miner of the dry-fuel, India's coal imports declined marginally to 20.18 million tonnes (MT) last month, commodities trader Mjunction has said in its latest report."India imported 20.18 MT of coal in June, 2015 against 20.35 MT in June last year. Even this marginal decline can be attributed to the ample availability of domestic coal," said Mjunction CEO and Managing Director Viresh Oberoi.The slight decline in imports comes at a time when the government has fixed a production target of one billion tonnes for Coal India by 2019.Coal Minister Piyush Goyal last month had said, "We will see a declining trend in the imports of thermal coking coal. It will stop after two years." Coal India, world's largest miner of dry fuel, recorded an output of 121.33 million tonnes (MT) in April-June 2015, recording a 12 percent growth over the same period previous fiscal.The coal giant achieved 99 percent of the target during the period resulting in increased offtake by the consumers. The miner produced 38.83 MT of coal in June.The offtake of coal at the miner's end stood at 129.48 MT during the April-June period this year against the target of 135.35.65 MT.For June 2015, the offtake of dry fuel was at 42.18 MT against the targeted 43.45 MT.The Centre has announced plans to boost Coal India's annual production to the level of 1 billion tonnes by 2019 to meet growing fuel demand.However, the company has successively missed its output targets.