The Inflation of Indian “Black Gold” India is blessed with an abundance of coal but most of the coal fired power plants are struggling with coal shortage due to infrastructure issues hampering access to this “black gold”. Of the 123 coal-fired utilities with coal linkage contracts, 68 plants have three or less days of coal stocks left, according to government data dated Oct. 23. So there is going to be higher imports of coal in the months to come as the power, cement and steel industry are expected to witness improvement in demand and capacity utilization. India is the second largest producer and importer of coal after China; the dependence on coal imports have increased especially thermal coal imports which is expected to climb to 180 million tonne in FY19 despite prices up surged to their highest in nearly seven years spurred by new demand and domestic infrastructure bottlenecks. The import of coal is directly impacting the government which is already embroiled in growing trade deficit and depreciating rupee.