Coal India Chairman Pramod Agrawal on Thursday said there is no proposal to give away any block of the PSU for commercial mining and the company is “sound and secure”. This comes in the wake of the government opening up the coal sector to private players.

Brushing aside anxieties about the future of Coal India Ltd (CIL) as “undue worry” as it is “sound and secure”, the Maharatna firm”s chairman said there is no proposal to give away any CIL block for commercial mining, The company has sufficient blocks with abundant resource capacity to continue as a commercially viable entity even in the competition era, the PSU said in a statement.

CIL has 447 coal blocks, mostly explored, under its disposal. In addition to these, 16 more blocks were allocated to CIL — 10 under Coal Mines (Special Provision) Act and six under Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act — making it the largest holder of coal resource in the country. The combined capacity of these 463 blocks is close to 170 billion tonnes.

Most of the lately allocated 16 blocks have a minimum 10 million tonnes (MTs) per annum production capacity. Their combined peak rated capacity is 264 MT. At the current rate of production and even after taking into account the projected growth in the ensuing years, CIL will be able to produce and meet the expanding coal demand of the country to a considerable extent in the foreseeable future. CIL is targeted to produce and supply one billion tonnes of coal by 2023-24 and take it further forward from there.

Having its own in-house consultancy arm, Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, with over four decades of expertise is another huge advantage to CIL in a competitive scenario. With exploration, mine planning, design, infrastructure engineering, environmental management as strong points, it sorts out most of coal mining issues, giving CIL an edge over other participants in the coal sector, it said. Also, CIL has a talented pool of multi-disciplinary professionals.

“Domestic demand for coal is outstripping the indigenous production. The resultant gap is being met through coal imports at huge forex outgo. If commercial miners can step in to fill this gap, imports to some extent would be reduced,” an official of the company said. “But their presence does not dent CIL”s status as the company is resilient and has the capability to expand,” the official said.

The country imported 247 MT of coal in the last fiscal, of which 52 MT was coking coal and the rest 195 MT non-coking coal. CIL is increasing internal efficiency in operations. Synergising its efforts with concerned state and central bodies is a more critical issue for the company to sort out many issues in stepping up its output and supplies, the statement said.