KOLKATA | Aug 02, 2017: Coal India's e-auction of coal sales was up by around 32 per cent to 32.7 million tonne during the first quarter of FY 2017-18.

"The PSU coal mining behemoth has booked 32.7 million tonne of coal through different e-auction schemes during April-June 2017 against 24.8 million tonne in the same quarter in the previous fiscal, an increase of 7.9 million tonne," a CIL official told PTI.

In 2016-17, CIL had booked 113.8 million tonne of coal through e-auction mode.

The coal major was pushing coal in the e-auction mode to improve margin though there had been a gradual decline in the price.

The CIL has proposed that a total of 105 million tonne coal be e-auctioned from July 2017 to March 2018.

Currently, CIL offered coal under different e-auction schemes like spot e-auction, special forward e-auction for power producers, exclusive e-auction for non-power and special spot e-auction.

Coal production in the (Q1) April-June quarter was 118.84 million tonne, registering a de-growth of 5.4 per cent compared to the same period last year.

(Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/)