With Coal India Ltd (CIL) already having downwardly revised its production target to 440 million tonnes from the original 452 million tonnes due to various factors like heavy rains and delays in grant of forest and environmental clearances, the Government has further painted a grim picture of the dry fuel crisis by saying the country is likely to import 194 million tonnes of coal in 2017, as against 135 million tonnes at present, to meet the demand of the power sector.

“In the current fiscal, we have to import 135 million tonnes of coal to meet our power sector requirement. The demand will increase further as we are setting up new power plants. It is expected that we will have to import 194 million tonnes of coal in 2017,” Minister of State for Coal Mr Pratik Prakashbapu Patil said in a seminar.

The minister also said during the seminar organised by World Confederation Productivity Science (India) and World Academy of Productivity Science that with the passage of time, the country’s dependence on imported coal would not come down and would go up instead. “There will be more dependency on imported coal. The dependency has increased from 6 per cent to 13 per cent in the last five to six years,” he said.

As per the Planning Commission, the demand-supply gap for coal in the ongoing year is likely to touch 142 million tonnes, with domestic availability of only 554 million tonnes against the requirement of 696 million tonnes. Earlier, the Plan Panel had also said the country’s coal demand will go up to 1,000 million tonnes by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, necessitating about 200 million tonnes of imports to bridge the shortfall in domestic output.

In such a scenario, CIL was last week asked by Coal Ministry Sriprakash Jaiswal to draw fresh action plans to meet the revised target of 440 million tonnes.

The minister had held a review meeting of CIL and its subsidiaries last Friday, after which CIL Chairman N C Jha had said that the company was hopeful that the target would be met. “CIL's subsidiary firms have been given the task to ramp up the present level ... they have made action plans to achieved it," Jha had added last week.

The state-run firm had missed its April-September target by about 20 million tonnes, recording an output of 176 million tonnes against the target of 196 million tonnes.

With the country’s largest coal producing subsidiary failing to meet its production targets, power entities have been badly hit by non supply of coal and some of them are left with a few days stock of the dry fuel.