Expert Committee on Coal submits recommendations part one

New Delhi, Mar 23 (UNI) The Government today said there was no shortage of coal in the country to meet the requirements of big powerhouses as well as small industries.

The coal companies are having sufficient stocks of 28 million tonnes this year against 21 million tonnes last year.

Briefing mediapersons on the recommendations of an expert committee on coal mines here, Coal Minister Shibu Soren said that on March 1, last year, the power companies had coal stocks at 80 lakh tonnes which has increased to 1.70 crore tonnes now.

He said to meet the demand - supply gap last year about 80 to 90 lakh tonnes of coal was also imported which is with the coal companies.

The expert committee on functioning of coal companies has e submitted the first part of its report with recommendations dealing with the short to medium term issues. The second part of the report deals with the rest of the issues.

He said the medium term covering upto 2011-12 the end of Eleventh Plan would be covered in Part One of the report and anything beyond the end of Eleventh Plan would fall in the long term and appear in the second part of the report.

The expert committee in its first report has recommended chalk the out a time-bound plan to cover the entire country by regional mapping in 15 years by Geological Survey of India, Centre for Mining, Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI) and Ministry of Coal.

Funding for the purpose should commence from the 2006-07 budget.

CMPDI's current capacity of drilling 3 lakh metres per annum must be raised to at least 15 lakh metres per annum by involving all eminent agencies available, including foreigns agencies.

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