An Indian Railways train carrying coal. (representative image) (Ramesh Pathania/Mint via Getty Images) Following the liberalisation and opening up of the domestic coal mining sector as a part of its Atmanirbhar Bharat policy push, the government is now looking at opening up of the coal marketing in a bid to unleash the sector's potential, reports Indian Express.
Emphasising on the need of opening up coal marketing, Union Coal Secretary Anil Kumar Jain said, "It’s about time that coal marketing was opened up. All the knots, which have tied up coal linkages, Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), Fuel Supply Agreements (FSAs) and bidding have to be opened up."
Jain stressed that the opening of coal marketing will give an assurance to the buyers that they will be able to get the product, if they want it, without having to go through multiple processes.
Presently, state-owned Coal India alone produces over 80 per cent of the domestic coal. In the previous fiscal, the total nationwide coal production stood at about 729 million tonne. In addition to this, a total of 248 million tonne of coal was also imported into the nation.
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