Support 'Zero West Mining' practices, Coal Minister urges miners

05 March, 2013

Current target for production of coal India ltd (CIL) will be off by 2-3 million tonnes due to work interruption in coal sector, said S K Srivastava, coal secretary at an event, organised by the industry body Assocham. He added that the preferential allotment of 17 coal blocks to public sector units should be over by mid-April.

The coal secretary said that ministry of coal is regularly monitoring coal production, off take and the status of environmental and forestry clearances apart from keeping a close liaison with the state governments so as to achieve the production targets.

The 11th plan ended with an overall production of 540 million tonnes in 2011-12 against which the production envisaged in the 12th plan is 795 million tones, implying a growth of 8%. The gap between the demand and domestic supply in the terminal year 2016-17 of the 12th plan works out to 185 million tonnes which needs to be through imports, highlights coal secretary.

He further said, “To achieve the projected growth in production a number of new projects are planned to be taken up in PSU coal companies and a number of coal blocks have been allocated to various private and government companies and few more are in the pipeline for allocation”.

While addressing the conference, Dinsha J Patel, Minister for mines has urged the miners to support “Zero West Mining” practices with lesser environmental impact. He also called for closer cooperation between various stakeholders and also emphasized the need for cooperation from state government which is critically important for the success of mining sector.

C S Verma, Chairman, SAIL and CMD of NMDC Ltd. said that the demand for mineral products continues to go up and fuels the growth engine for economies and societies. But simply meeting market demand for minerals commodities falls far short of meeting society’s expectations of industry, the mining and minerals industry faces varying and sometimes seemingly contradictions expectations from different stakeholders.