Indian coal minister said that India's coal deficit will deepen sharply next year, forcing Asia's third largest economy to import more of the fuel on which it relies.
Mr Sriprakash Jaiswal said that the coal shortage will be 104 million tonnes in the next fiscal to March 2012 a jump of 23.8% from the current year's estimate.
Delegates at a coal mining summit said difficulties over land acquisition, social and environmental hurdles and low investments would be a drag on output growth. Mr Vivek Ojha vice president of Global Coke a coking coal producer said that "The deficit will keep on increasing. The resource that we have is not seeing that much development."
Mr Jaiswal coal minister in a statement said that "While India continues to produce a majority of the coal that it consumes, imports of coal are also rising at a fast pace, already contributing to over 10% of coal consumption.?
The minister said that availability of coal, which accounts for more than half of the country's power generation capacity, for the power sector was seen at 388 million tonnes in the current fiscal versus a requirement of 440 million tones.
Participants at the summit said Indian miners would have to combine expansion at home and a search for assets overseas to keep coal availability up.
Mr DN Abrol executive director raw materials at Jindal Steel & Power referring to the few underground mines the country has said that "India should have a continual thrust on underground mining. India should go more for bigger projects such as large cluster mining."
Mr Ganesan Natarajan director of Ennore Coke said that miners need to give better incentives to attract young professionals and invest in technology.
India has set a goal of adding 62 GW of generation capacity over a five year period ending March 2012, with the bulk of that coal, in an attempt to reduce peak hour power shortages and provide electricity to millions of rural households.
But coal shortages have limited the power generation.
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