Delhi, August 8: State-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) said that it reported a 21.5 percent rise in coal allocation under the four e-auction windows in the April-June quarter at 19.76 million tons ( MT). The allocation of fuel by the PSU under all the four e-auction windows was 16.26 MT in the corresponding quarter a year ago, CIL said in a statement.
The four e-auction categories are raw coal, special forward e-auction for power producers, exclusive e-auction for non-power sector and special spot auction. Booking by non-power sector experienced a three-fold rise during April-June 2020 over the same period in 2019 under an exclusive e-auction to it.
During the period referred to, CIL allocated a total of 6.66 MT to this sector, compared with 2.2 MT in the quarter of the year-ago, with a volume increase of 4.46 MT.
The Maharatna coal miner offered 24.4 MT in the first quarter of FY’21 under spot e-auction, up 149% from 9.8 MT in the comparable 2019 period.
However, since March, the actual booking volume was marginally down at 6.9 MT compared to 7.4 MT in the same quarter last year, in the midst of the COVID-19 led crimp in demand. Coal booked under spot e-auction for the month of June posted growth of 77 per cent at 3.7 MT against the same month a year ago.
The PSU said in a statement, “June 2020 also yielded CIL a growth of around 48 per cent against June 2019 in regard to total allocation of coal under the four e-auction sale schemes.”
CIL had booked 2.1 MT of coal during last fiscal June. CIL’s allocation in June was 5.83 MT, compared with 3.95 MT in June of last fiscal year. CIL accounts for more than 80% of domestic coal output.
