The impact of COVID on the coal business of Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) is likely to be much deeper than expected this financial year, although coal production has crossed the five-million-tonne mark in a month for the first time in December.
Production of coal in the first nine months of the fiscal remains over 30% less compared to the last financial year and it’s 33% less against the target set by the company for 2020-21. In the backdrop of economic and industrial activity coming back to near normalcy, the company management had planned to produce 6.2 million tonnes of coal in December at 2.1 lakh tonnes every day.
However, according to the company officials, the production achieved during the month was 5.72 million tonnes. “For the first time this COVID-hit fiscal, the production was better this December (2020) than in the previous year with a nominal improvement of 0.07%. We hope to carry on the trend through the last quarter and reach as closer as possible to the last year’s production of 64.02 million tonnes, lest the production target of 67.5 million tonnes this fiscal,” a senior official in the production wing of SCCL said.
Realising the fact that even meeting the last year’s production of 64.02 million tonnes is not possible practically as the production in the first three quarters of the fiscal is only 32.66 million tonnes, the company has decided to make the most of the remainder of the financial year so that business loss is controlled as much as possible.
“The company has suffered a business loss of about ₹5,000 crore during the lockdown and it continues to grow bigger with every passing month,” an official source in the company said. Production this year is likely to be around 50 million tonnes, first time after 2015-16 when it crossed 60 million tonnes.
In dispatches of coal to customers too, the company is lagging behind its plans and targets with over 31.4% lower achievement in the nine months of this fiscal compared to the same period last year. For December, the company had plans to send 5.73 million tonnes to its customers but could go up to 5.27 million tonnes itself, mainly due to low off-take (demand) from the customers.
