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The Indian coal industry, one of the largest in terms of reserve base and production level, has gained significant momentum in the past few years. Mainly dominated by PSUs like Coal India Ltd, which contributes over 75% of the country’s total coal production, the industry has attracted government concern and investments. However, India has not been able to minimize its coal deficit despite huge resource base, and still depends on imports. As per our latest estimations, carried out in recent research report, the overall coal imports are anticipated to cross the 100 Million Metric Tons-mark in near future.

According to our research report “Indian Coal Industry Forecast to 2013”, the coal demand has been rising constantly in India on back of high demand from major coal consuming sectors, including power, cement and steel. Our study also analyzed that plentiful coal reserves in Jharkhand, growing industry demand mainly by power sector, and the increasing government support will boost the coal production in the country. We estimate that coal production will grow at a CAGR of around 9% during 2011-12 to 2013-14. It is also anticipated that the demand for thermal coal and coking coal by power and steel sectors, respectively, will gain momentum in near future.

We also observed that the Indian coal industry is set to witness a great boost in near future on back of strong government support and rising mergers and acquisitions of coal mines in overseas market. The presence of vast opportunities in coal washeries is also encouraging players to infuse money in them. Recently, de-allocation of coal blocks and stake sales in PSUs were among the major steps taken by the government to boost production and investment in the coal industry.

While analyzing the pricing mechanism, we found that Coal India’s latest pricing system, adopting Gross Calorific Value (GCV) method, would have a minimal impact on power consumers, while non-power consumers would be affected the most. On distribution front, we observed that under-developed infrastructure has been creating problems for transportation of coal to various power plants across the country. The situation is expected to get worse if railways, roads and ports are not developed in pace with the capacity addition program. Moreover, detailed information on key market players and government initiatives has been included in the comprehensive study to present a balanced outlook of the Indian coal industry to clients.