(FE)
Stocks at Coal India mines plunged to a five-year low of 21 million tonne (mt) in October, as a sudden surge in demand for the fuel from the power sector has fast-tracked the dispatches over the last few weeks. If the low coal stocks at pitheads continues, the supplies could be disrupted, leading to power plant outages (low plant availability, in technical terms).
The looming difficulty has accelerated coal imports in recent months (see chart) but a wide price differential between the domestic and imported coal is still putting a lid on imports. For comparable thermal grades, the imported coal is at least a third costlier than the locally available fuel, and in some cases, the landed cost of imported varieties are 1.5 times that of local coal.
