Coal India's (CIL) progressive production of 412.6 million tonnes (MTs) during April-November'22 evinced a sharp y-o-y increase of 59.2 MTs with a strong growth of around 17%. Production was 353.4 MTs for the comparable period last year.

CIL has achieved 99.7% of the progressive production target and brought down the annual asking growth rate by almost half to 6.7%. The company began FY'23 with an asking rate of 12.4% in a bid to edge past the year's output target of 700 MTs.

The state owned coal miner has to produce 287.4 MTs of coal during the remaining four months of the current fiscal to reach its FY'23 output target.

“This is achievable” said a senior official of CIL adding “with strong augmentation in production so far and overburden removal displaying robust growth that helps in faster extraction of coal in the coming months, we feel confident of surpassing the fiscal's production target. Also, during Q4 production steps up into higher trajectory”.

For the month of November'22 at 60.7 MTs CIL's production achieved 100% target satisfaction clocking nearly 13% growth over 53.8 MTs of last year's November. Increase was 6.9 MTs in absolute terms.

Sequentially, production has risen by 14.7% in November'22 over 52.9 MTs of October'22, the volume increasing being 7.8 MTs.

Boosting CIL's prospects of ramping up future production, overburden removal surged ahead by 18% ending November'22. CIL excavated 984.5 M.Cu.M of topsoil till November'22 against 835 M.Cu.M for comparable period of FY'22. OBR growth for the month was 28.4%.

CIL's supplies to power plants went up by 39.5 MTs to 380.7 MTs during AprilNovember'22 posting 11.6% growth. Supplies were 341.2 MTs year ago same period.

Total coal off-take to all consuming sectors was 445 MTs till November FY'23 with a jump of nearly 24 MTs registering y-o-y growth of 5.7%.

Coal stock at CIL's pitheads at the end November stood at 28.5 MTs.