Coal India targets production of 492 million tonnes in 2013-14

Coal India has set a production target of 492 million tonnes for the coming financial year even as the state-run coal miner is expected to miss the current fiscal target of 464 million tonnes.

While the Planning Commission had proposed a target of 487 million tonnes for the next fiscal, the coal ministry has opted to add 5 million tonnes to the target, taking it to 492 million tonnes, secretary in the coal ministry, SK Srivastava, said at an Assocham event today.

''We, in the coal ministry, had taken an additional five million tonnes production. For Coal India, next year's target was supposed to be 487 million tonnes, we have taken the target to 492 million tonnes,'' Srivastava said.

CIL's move to burden itself with an additional 5 million tonnes production target comes in the backdrop of the state-run coal miner missing current year's target of 464 million tones by 2-3 million tones. CIL, however, attributes the shortfall in production to other issues, including a workers strike.

''Strike and all that cumulatively took us 1.5 million tonnes. We had a little bit of hiccups, but by and large, we should be able to achieve the current year's production target. We should be off by 2-3 million tonnes, not more than that,'' he said.

CIL proposes to supply the additional 10 million tonnes mined to power producers, which could push up coal allocation to the power sector to 377 million tonnes from earlier projected 372 million tonnes for the 2013-14 fiscal, he added.