Coal India’s net profit rises 29 percent

World’s largest coal miner, Coal India’s (CIL) net profit rose by 29.06 percent to Rs.4,020 crore in the first half of the current fiscal (2010-11) over the corresponding period last year.

Releasing the April-September 2010 results of the company, CIL chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said it had recorded a net profit of Rs.3,115.02 crore in the same period last year.

The company’s net sales went up by 16.9 percent to Rs.22,525.33 crore during the first half of 2010-11, as against Rs.19,269.53 crore in April-September period in 2009-10.
The coal production, however, went up marginally by 0.67 percent to 185.68 million tonnes in the April-September period, from 184.44 tonnes in the same period last year.
However, there was a shortfall of 18.27 million tonnes as the production target in the April-September 2010-11 period was 203.95 million tonnes.
Due to problems of environmental clearance, huge pithead stocks and offtake problems, CIL has revised its target for 2010-11 to 460.5 million tonnes from the original aim of producing 486 million tonnes.
For 2011-12, the production target has been scaled down to 486 million tonnes from the originally decided 520.5 million tonnes due to 17 new projects not getting environmental and forest clearance.
“These 17 projects were supposed to produce 54 million tonnes. So, the production target had to logically come down to 466 million tonnes.
However, we have said we can make up 20 million tonnes. So the revised target for 2011-12 is 486 million tonnes,” said a CIL spokesman.
Several mining projects are stuck with the environment and forests ministry extending the time-frame for the Composite Environment Pollution index that bars mining activities where the CEPI is 70 percent up to March next year.