India Achieves Major Success in Coal Import Reduction Despite Increase in Power Demand

India is third largest energy consuming country and electricity demand grows by 4.7% each year. To reduce the dependence on imports of coal, major reforms have been carried out by the Ministry of Coal with the vision of “Atma Nirbhar Bharat”. The Ministry has also amended the Mineral Concession (Amendment) Rules, 1960 under MMDR (Amendment) Act, 2021 to allow lessee of captive mines to sell coal or lignite up to 50% of the total excess production after meeting the requirements of the end-use plant. With this amendment, MoC has paved the way for releasing of additional coal in the market by greater utilization of mining capacities of captive coal blocks which has led to increase in production of coal by

36.06% from 39.15 MT upto Nov 19* to 53.27 MT during corresponding period of FY 22. The reforms have led to an increase in domestic production of coal by 9.01% and the overall coal production rose at 447.54 MT upto November 21 as compared to 410.55 MT in the corresponding months of FY 20.

With increasing domestic production of coal, we have achieved significant reduction in import of coal despite surge in power demand. The coal based power generation upto November 2021 is 671.906 BU (Billion Units) with an increase of 5.17% over generation of 638.82 BU during the corresponding period of FY 20. Imported coal based power generation which was 61.78 BU during April to Nov 2019 has reduced by 51.38% to 30.036 BU during corresponding months of current FY 22. Imports of all grades of Non Coking Coal has reduced to 107.36 MT during the period April to November 2021 from a level of 131.51 MT during the corresponding months of the FY 20, leading to a decline of about 18.36%.

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