New Delhi: Coal India's Jharkhand-based arm, Central Coalfields, has topped among eight subsidiaries by surpassing output target with production of 12.59 million tonnes in the first three months of the current fiscal.
Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) not only achieved 120 per cent of the 10.50 MT target set for April-June quarter but also registered a record 26.6 per cent growth over the corresponding period in the previous fiscal, CIL has said.
CCL during the last fiscal had become the first subsidiary of Coal India to achieve its production target as well as growth in raw coal output by registering unprecedented growth of 11.2 per cent in raw coal output.
Its coal production had stagnated at around 48 MT for four consecutive financial years from 2009-10 to 2012-13 due to "acute shortage" of land but in 2014-15 it notched 55.64 MT production against 55 MT target on account of various expansion and other initiatives, as per its CMD Gopal Singh.
Overall Coal India, the world's largest miner of dry fuel, recorded an output of 121.33 MT in April-June, 99 per cent of the target, registering a 12 per cent growth over the same period previous fiscal.
The development comes at a time when the government has already fixed a target of one billion tonnes of production for the miner by 2019.
Another arm Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL) too surpassed production target during April-June 2015 and recorded an output of 9.12 MT against 8.998 MT target.
Two other arms - Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and NCL (Northern Coalfields Ltd ) too registered impressive shows by achieving 99 per cent production of the targeted quantity at 31.07 MT and 18.26 MT, respectively during the period.
MCL recorded a 13.3 per cent growth in production over the same period in previous fiscal, while NCL output was higher by 18.2 per cent.
South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) and Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL) achieved 95 per cent each of the target recording 31.16 MT and 8.81 MT of production, registering 13.2 and 3 per cent growth in output in April-June period compared with a year ago period.
Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) achieved 90 per cent of the target by producing 10.26 MT during the period. However, the worst performance was shown by North East Coalfields (NEC) which could achieve only 27 per cent of the target by producing 0.07 MT of coal in the period.
CIL which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production has eight subsidiaries -- ECL (West Bengal), BCCL (Jharkhand), CCL (Jharkhand), SECL (Chhattisgarh), WCL (Maharashtra), NCL (Madhya Pradesh), MCL (Odisha) and NEC (North East).
The Centre has announced plans to boost Coal India's annual production to the level of one billion tonnes by 2019 to meet growing fuel demand. However, the company has successively missed its output targets.
