(FE)
Union coal minister Prahlad Joshi on Wednesday said that his ministry was not keen to acquire any coal assets abroad and aims to produce the required quantity in India instead to protect foreign exchange outflow. The country imported 235 million tonne last year and forked out 27.1 lakh crore. ” We want to cut on our import bill,” Joshi said.
While Coal India ( CIL) is in looking for assets in Russia, Canada and Australia, the minister’s statement has blown up a controversy whether it was against the decision of the ministry that CIL was in pursuit for assets abroad. “We are not thinking to acquire coal assets but we only want to freeze the order in advance to get coal at competitive prices,” Joshi said at the eighth Asian Mining Congress. However, CIL officials later clarified that CIL was only looking for coking coal assets abroad and was neither looking for any thermal coal assets nor it was keen to acquire any.
CIL chairman and managing director A K Jha in a recent interview told FE that the company was looking for coking coal assets in Russia, Australia and Canada to secure coking coal supplies for the steel industry. But he couldn’t divulge further details on the acquisition since the ‘disclosure agreements on the properties were not signed’.
