Coal India CMD Hints At Price Hike Due To Increased Costs

The costs of Coal India have gone up and there is no reason that the state-run company should not increase the price of the dry fuel, the PSU's Chairman and Managing Director Pramod Agarwal said.

With regard to coal price, he said Coal India (CIL) is in discussion with all the stakeholders and in general everybody is on board.

'Coming to the price point...because our costs have increased everywhere so there is no reason that CIL should not increase the price,' the CMD said.

He was speaking during the Q1 FY22 earnings conference call.

'Coming to the base price of auction, now it has been restored in most of the cases, and we are providing some premium right at the beginning, we are adding some premium at the best price only and there is no opposition from any quarter, whatever opposition is there we are tackling that,' Agarwal said.

He further said that CIL's dispatches and production despite all the constraints of COVID-19 have been good.

This (April-June) was a particularly difficult quarter for Coal India (CIL) because in these three months COVID-19 affected every stage of operation, he said.

'Despite that, our production was almost the same as it was last year and dispatches were substantially high compared to last year and it was even higher than 2019-2020,' he said.

CIL accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal output. The company is eyeing one billion tonnes of production by 2023-24.

(PTI)