Coal India is looking at long-term price contracts, of at least three-four year periods, with foreign entities, 54 of them, who have responded to expression of interests (EoI) for strategic partnership with it. The idea is to import coal through this strategic partnership at a price which would be way cheaper than imported coal. In India, consumers either buy coal from the volatile spot market or through one-year contracts.
The coal major will primarily focus on either forming JV companies or collaborating with foreign entities who have coal assets in their respective home country. It is open to investing an aggregate of $1.5 billion in these ventures. CIL had invited expression of interests to form joint ventures or collaborate with mining companies from four countries – United States, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.
Following his visit to meet interested parties in the US, Mr Partha S Bhattacharyya, chairman CIL said: "Central Mine Planning & Design Institute (CMPDIL) is examining each of these offers. They have made different offers and CMPDIL is examining them to come up with a format for presentation that needs to be made to CIL top bosses by December."
"We found that the companies in the US have not been experiencing much of a rise in production due to demand stagnation. However, they said, adequate investment and rise in demand in the form of orders from India could give them the boost to enhance production and take up additional investment in conjunction with CIL," said Mr Bhattacharyya.
Adding, he said: "We intend to work out the terms of the long term contract through strategic alliances which can be an effective way of importing coal faster and at cheaper prices."
On funding the proposed investments, Mr Bhattacharyya said: "CIL has total reserves of about $5-6 billion. It generates additional reserves of about Rs 3-4K crore every year that can take care of the domestic investments for expansion and we would be open to investing anything between $1-5 billion for these ventures."
Back home, CIL registered a 9.9% rise to 184.44 million tonnes (167.8) in the first half of 2009-10. However, production from underground mines, which started showing a marginal rise, has declined once again albeit marginally by 0.31 mt to 20.78 mt. Coal offtake, on the other hand, rose 4.3% at 194.3 mt (186.22 mt) in the same period.
The company registered a decline in profit before tax 20% to Rs 3,600 crore against Rs 4,484 crore in the previous period. It is expecting a Rs 2,000 crore additional outgo on account of wage revision and a Rs 1,400 crore tax payout.
On forward E-auction, CIL top bosses said the first few e-auctions did not evince much interest from customers. About 16 lakh tonnes was offered but only about 2 lakh tonnes was picked up. "It seems that the mark-up on the notified price has not attracted adequate interest.
The base prices for e-auction were on cost of production basis subject to a maximum of 100% over notified price, since coal being offered were from underground mines that may have turned unviable if sold at notified prices. However, we need to reduce the base price to attract adequate bidders," he said.
Source: Economic Times
No comments:
Post a Comment