Date | May 22, 2017:

Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL), a subsidiary of Coal India (CIL), hopes to overcome the production shortfall of the previous financial year and achieve an output of 160 million tonnes (mt) in 2017-18.

In 2016-17, MCL emerged as the largest coal producing subsidiary of CIL and, hence, was given the biggest target of 167 mt. However, MCL could produce only 139.21 mt, as key operating mines were hit by workers’ protests. The lower-than-expected production proved to be a key drag on CIL’s balance sheet. CIL was supposed to produce 598.61 mt in the previous financial year, but actual output shrunk to 554.13 mt, an achievement of 93 per cent and a growth of just 2.9 per cent over FY17.

Sutirtha Bhattacharya, chairman of CIL said, MCL had the capacity and potential to achieve big targets, by optimum capacity utilisation and taking advance actions for environment, forest and other statutory clearances. Bhattacharya inspected the mining activities of MCL at Ib valley ccoalfields in Odisha on Saturday and after that chaired a review meeting with the top management officials of MCL.

The company has a potential to achieve higher targets, for which optimum capacity utilisation is need of the hour, Bhattacharya said.

Production at some of the key operating mines in MCL’s jurisdiction was hit by workers’ protests. Law and order problems and pendency in settlement of some long-standing R&R (rehabilitation and resettlement) issues affected production.

“We hope to overcome the R&R related problems through dialogue with the affected people. MCL has also urged the state government to help settle law and order issues,” said a company official.

MCL has been given a target to produce 250 mt of coal by 2019-20. For realisation of the target, the miner is going to open some new mines in Garjanbahal and Siarmal in Basundhara area (in Sundargarh district). MCL has an ambitious target of investing Rs 15,000-20,000 crore. Most of the money would be invested in infrastructure creation like building rail network, road network and coal loading systems.

Siarmal in Sundargarh district will have a production capacity of 50 mt a year, making it the second biggest coal mine in Asia. The Garjanbahal coal mine would produce 10 mt.

Till date, MCL has commissioned 34 projects with an investment of Rs 2823.77 crore. Additionally, there are 17 projects at its Talcher and Ib valley coalfields under various stages of completion where the coal miner is investing Rs 11,670.8 crore.

For MCL, the key requirement for scaling up production are new railway lines, switching over to full mechanisation and full technology adoption, large scale contract mining, upgrading skills of employees, speedy acquisition of land and expeditious environment and forest clearances.

(Source: http://www.business-standard.com/)