State-owned CIL on Wednesday said the actual coal despatch under the five e-auction windows increased by 31 per cent to 77.4 million tonnes (MTs) in the April-December period of this fiscal.
The actual coal despatch under the five e-auction windows by Coal India (CIL) was at 59 MT in the year-ago period, the PSU said in a statement.
Special forward e-auction, the exclusive window meant for the power sector, accounts for nearly 28 MTs of the total despatched quantity.
Coal supplied under other e-auction outlets, where predominantly non-regulated sector customers access to coal, accounted for 49.5 MT.
Under this category, CIL logged a growth of 21 per cent, compared to 41 MT of the same period last year, and a two-fold increase over 24.4 MT in April-December 2019-20.
The volume increase in supplies under e-auction was achieved even though CIL pumped an all-time high of almost 391 MT of coal to thermal power plants during the April-December period, clocking 23.3 per cent growth.
The increase in absolute terms is 74 MT. In comparison, the despatch to the power sector was 317 MT April-December of the previous fiscal.
CIL's total off-take scaled up to 482 MT during the first nine months of the fiscal in progress, registering a year-on-year growth of 18 per cent. The increase in absolute terms was 72 MT compared to 410 MT April-December of the previous fiscal.
CIL has booked a total of 83.7 MT of coal under its five e-auction categories during April-December of this fiscal - a 2.3 MT increase over 81.4 MT of the corresponding period last fiscal.
During the fourth quarter of the current fiscal, even if CIL books the same quantity of coal in e-auctions that it did during the same quarter previous fiscal, which was 42.6 MT, the company would still sail past the record high e-auction allocation of 124 MT achieved in 2020-21.
The premium over notified price in e-auctions increased almost four-fold to 58 per cent during April-December this fiscal, compared to 15 per cent in the year-ago period.
Even after supplying a record volume of coal to the power sector, the despatch to the non-power sector during April-December this fiscal stood at 91.1 MT, which is almost at par with 92.2 MT of the same period last year.
