Coal India allocates funds for infrastructure and railway networking

In its annual report this year, India’s largest fuel producer Coal India has said that it might spend Rs 10,600 crore this fiscal to raise its production capacity and ramp-up the infrastructure. As per an Economic Times report, the company had also provisioned Rs 500 crore for its Mozambique project, though the funds, reportedly, remained unspent.

Coal India, in 2014-15 had spent Rs 5,173 crore on projects against a targeted investment of Rs 5,225 crore.

The firm, however, has allocated Rs 5,990 crore this year to ramp-up capacity and taking on new projects. The initiative will help the company achieve a production target of 1 billion tonne by 2020. Of this, 908 million tonne has already been firmed up while the rest is being charted.
The company has also kept aside an amount of nearly Rs 4,150 crore to invest in infrastructure projects this year. The project primarily includes railway infrastructure to ensure coal evacuation from all possible areas.

An investment of Rs 5,894 crore had already been approved by the Coal India Board earlier this year focusing on two railway lines – Tori-Shivpur-Kathotia in Jharkhand and Kharsia-Korichapar-Dharamjaigarh in Chhattisgarh largely.

It had also approved an investment of Rs 11,363 crore in two 800 MW coal based super-critical thermal power plants under its subsidiary Mahanadi Coalfields.

The company's existing projects are envisaged to contribute about 165 million tonne of coal towards its 1 billion tonne target, while projects under implementation are likely to contribute 561 million tonne and future projects about 182 million tonne by 2019-20.