India’s richest PSU Coal India growth flat

Even as Coal India Ltd has overtaken Oil & Natural Gas Corp to become India's most valuable state-owned company and the second-most valuable overall (behind Reliance Industries Ltd) in terms of market capitalisation, for the first time in history it also registered a zero per cent production growth in 2010-11.

''The 2010-11 target was 460.5 million tonnes, but we have been able to produce only 431.32 mt,'' CIL chairman N C Jha said in Nagpur on Wednesday.

''Apart from delay in getting forest clearances, non-completion of some contracts due to litigations and law and order problems in some areas were the other reasons why the production suffered,'' he said.

According to Jha, delayed forest clearances caused a deficit of 18 mt in the last fiscal year. He said the target for 2011-12 has been scaled down to 452 mt.

 The CIL chairman further said, ''Dispatches (supply) to consumer companies - mainly power companies – also fell short of the target of 462 mt by about 38 mt - and failure on the part of the railways to provide the number of rakes needed was the main reason behind this. We got 178 rakes as against 190 required in April.''

 But he admitted, ''There was deficiency on our part too, since we couldn't reach coal to some of the rakes.''