Substantial reduction in import of non coking coal during this fiscal

Coal import during April-August, 2021 reduced to 94.15 Million ton against 107.01 MT in 2019-20.

India has been importing coal to bridge the gap between the requirement of coal and the domestic production in the country. The dependence on imports for coking coal mainly used in the steel sector has been predominantly due to very limited domestic availability. Thus, import under this category has been largely non-substitutable. Even though the import of coking coal is non-substitutable, consequent to the sustained effort of the government, in line with mission ‘AtmaNirbhar, the imports of various grades of non-coking coal have reduced substantially during the current financial year. The latter includes high GCV thermal coal used for industrial purposes and low GCV that goes for power generation.

In the first five months of the Financial Year 2021-22 i.e. up to August 2021(Firm import data is available up to August, 21), the import of all varieties of non coking coal has reduced to 70.85 MT from 84.44 MT during the corresponding months of the financial year 2019-20 representing a decline of about 16.09 percent. The financial year 2020- 21 is not being taken for comparison purpose due to industrial production getting severely affected during this year because of COVID-19 related restrictions where the decline observed is 21 percent.

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