India has 5th largest reserves of coal and 3rd largest miner of Coal in world. 2nd biggest importer of coal. Coal is among top 5 commodities imported by India. India has kept Coal import large chunk every year where India spends its foreign exchange. Coal import by Indian govt in million tonnes.
We agree that India’s own capacity of coal production rose from 648mn t in 2014 to 716mn t in 2018. As an input from Coal ministry has identified 40 mines which produce with an estimated production capacity of 150mn t/yr.
Why Indian govt PSU’s go for imported coal because of lower cost of coal and the quality of the coal (without added water):
Some images of vale coal mine Tete Mozambique. Which can highlight the automation in this industry and hence reducing the cost of Coal.
Indian govt and system need to work to make the coal industry corruption proof. Currently water added on raw coal to increase the weight and if coal is transported through trains. Then the trains are stopped/slowed at designated place by the mafia to take out the coal and sell in open market. Zero investment full income and only need to bribe the goods train driver+ Guard.
Some images from Indian coal mines which shows how we can increase manual efforts which will lead into higher cost of coal production.
Coal India is the biggest producer of coal. Indian govt holds 90% of the Indian mines and investing in abroad mines. But their issue is high cost of production means higher selling price which makes them unattractive even with Govt PSU’s like NTPC and other govt owned power plants. The only solution is getting small and effective smart companies which can bring revolution in the mining sector.
Alot of Indian engineers who have full know how of the coal mining and plant erection & commissioning work for alot of these facilities which are running in Africa.
India is forcefully ignoring to see those engineer can do for Africa and Indonesia. Coal India can look another and keeping the same way of low production and high cost of production.
Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
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