Coal India to Invest 42, 000 Crore, Coal India Future Mining Projects Planned Investment

Coal India Ready to Invest 42,000 Crore

Coal India is gearing up for around Rs 42,000-crore investment in the next few years as its projects, stuck under environment norms, start getting clearances. This also involves foreign acquisitions, the clearances for which are likely to come in the next few weeks.

“With a new environment minister at the Centre, things have already started to look bright. We hope the ministry of environment and forest will slowly start clearing projects that were held up over the last several months,” a senior coal ministry official on condition of anonimity said.

“The ministry of environment and forest (MoEF), in a change of stand, has started to listen to problems and suggestions of companies that are affected by pollution norms, Coal India being one of them. We also hope that the bar on mine expansion and new projects due to the pollution index will gradually be lifted,” he said.

For Coal India, the MoEF has already lifted the pollution index related ban on three major projects. These are for the Talcher mines and Ib Valley mines in Orissa and Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh. “We are expecting clearances for our Korba projects in the next one month,” the coal ministry official said.

“The Chaturvedi Committee which released its draft report on go, no-go classification of forest area has also recommended that each project be evaluated on the basis of merit. Areas like sanctuaries and others will have to be marked as permanently no-go,” said the official.

“As projects start receiving clearances, a large part of the cash reserves will be used up gradually over the next few years. In my calculation, we will need around Rs 42,000 crore in projects envisaged by Coal Videsh, for washeries as well as projects in the pipelines,” said A K Sinha, director-finance said.

According to initial estimates, Coal India will require about Rs 7,000 crore for setting up some 40-odd washeries.

It has earmarked about Rs 6,000 crore for foreign acquisitions and about Rs 29,000 for expansion and new mining projects. Chairman N C Jha said: “There are some 163 projects in the pipeline that have received all kinds of clearance with a total production capacity of 440 million tonnes.These will come at an investment of Rs 28,860 crore and will attain full capacity in the next five years. Nevertheless, about 221 million tonnes of production will be achieved from some of these projects during 2011-12, the rest will come in the next five years.” “If we receive the pending clearances, we can increase production capacity to 625 million tonnes soon. Expansion of existing projects can give us another 190 million tonnes. All this can give us production capacity to about 800 million tonnes in the medium terms.” said director-finance Sinha.

Source: Economic Times