New Delhi: State-owned Coal India plans to invest a whopping Rs 57,000 crore over the next five years to increase its production capacity to 908 million tonne.
The coal ministry has set a target for the company to nearly double its production to reach 1 billion tonne by 2020. An investment plan has been firmed up with the aim of achieving this target.
“Coal India has assessed a tentative capital investment of Rs 57,000 crore for the next five years to ramp up its coal production to 908.1 mt from the production level of 494.80 mt in 2014-15", coal and power minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
The company’s investment would be increased in each successive year to increase production. The tentative capital investment projection for 2015-16 is Rs 5,990.5 crore, Rs 8,282 crore for 2016-17, Rs 14,539 crore for 2017-18, Rs 14,635 crore for 2018-19, Rs 13,529 crore for 2019-20, the minister said.
As part of the exercise to increase coal production and improve its evacuation, CIL is investing Rs 8,615.69 crore in the three major railway infrastructure projects — Tori-Shibpur in CCL (Jharkhand), Jharsuguda-Barapalli in MCL (Odisha) and East and East-West corridor in SECL (Chhattisgarh).
The national coal miner is also pursuing MDO (mine development operators) process to supplement coal production. The productivity is also proposed to be enhanced through technology upgradation in opencast mines and use of continuous miner technology in case of underground mines.
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