The Indian coal deficit will be all the more evident in the coming year. India is currently facing acute coal shortage and will be required to import fuel in even larger quantities in the future. The shortage in the next fiscal year will reach 104 million tonnes as per Sriprakash Jaiswal, the Indian Coal Minister.
Vivek Ojha, vice president of Global Coke, a coking coal producer said that the deficit will keep on increasing as the resources that India has are not seeing much development. He was a delegate at a coal mining summit held on Tuesday addressing issues over land acquisition, social and environmental hurdles and low investments which were holding back growth of the coal industry.
There is an estimated 23.8% deficit level jump being touted from the current year’s deficit in the coming year. D.N. Abrol, executive director raw materials at Jindal Steel & Power said that India should have a continual thrust on underground mining. It should go more for bigger projects such as large cluster mining.
The summit participants agreed that Indian miners needed to combine expansion of domestic projects with a search for overseas assets to make up in some measure for the coal deficit.