A fifth of India’s thermal power plants short of coal

India’s coal shortage is getting worse.

Minister of State for Power K C Venugopal said 18 of India’s 89 power plants are facing a serious coal shortage. Of the remainder, 25 have coal for less than four days’ operations while34 others had coal good for only seven days.

Power utilities reported a generation loss of 8.7 billion units until from 2011 until this February due to the shortage of coal.

"None of the power utilities in the country has reported any of their thermal power stations in stuck for want of coal although, inadequate availability of coal vis-a-vis requirement has affected electricity generation in some of the power plants," he said.

As solutions to this problem, Coal India, Ltd is being asked to increase coal production while power utilities have been told to import coal. India is expected to import 60 million metric tons of thermal coal.

The government has also slashed the custom duty on thermal coal to zero from 5% and cut the countervailing duty to 1% from 5% for fiscal years 2013 and 2014.