NEW DELHI: Claiming the coal supply is far from normal, a captive power producers’ body on Monday urged the government to normalise the coal supplies to Captive Power Plant (CPP) based industries or it would lead to an irrevocable collateral damage of these national assets.
The Indian Captive Power Producers Association (ICPPA) said the shortage of coal supply will impact the aluminum industry operations the most as any power outage in aluminum plants will lead to complete shutdown, which will take minimum 12 months of recovery, resulting in job loss of more than 8 lakh people.
“Banks will have debt exposure of over Rs 1 Lakh crore and additional national forex loss of Rs 90,000 cr. (~$ 12 billion). Any shortfall in aluminum will jeopardise investments of Rs 1.4 Lakh crore, including debt of Rs 1 lakh crore,” said ICPPA.
The association said in the last few months, coal supplies meant for CPPs and industries have been either stopped or significantly curtailed for diversion of the fuel to the power sector. It also highlighted the issue of insufficient coal rake supplies to CPP based industries at levels of 40% to 50%. “...curtailment to CPP is continuing despite power sector having come out of the coal crisis,” said ICPPA.
However, the government on Monday said that Coal India Limited (CIL) dispatched 291.72 million tonne during Apr-Oct 2021 to enhance coal availability across the country. It is 54 MT more coal against the same period of last year.