Coal India’s day of reckoning

India’s largest supplier of coal is pivoting to boost its renewable energy output. It will need to cut its operating costs first, and increase coal output to keep the numbers up

- SUDHEER PAL SINGH

The current financial year is turning out to be one of reckoning for the 50-year-old Coal India Ltd (CIL).

The country’s largest coal miner has seen a drop in almost all of its key operational and financial parameters in the April-September period. Production has fallen 4 per cent to 329 million tonnes (MT), offtake dropped 3 per cent to 357 MT, overburden removal 3 per cent to 855 million cubic meters, revenue from operations 4 per cent to ₹66,029 crore, net sales 3 per cent to 58,790 crore, and profit after tax slumped 25 per cent to ₹12,997 crore.

For a company that meets around 80 per cent of the country’s domestic coal demand all by itself, these numbers are worrisome to say the least.

“We were among the top profit-making companies in the last two financial years (2023-24 and 2024-25) but this year, if you look at the H1 results, they are not encouraging,” conceded P M Prasad, who retired as Coal India chairman and managing director last month, in an address to employees on his last working day. That, incidentally, was also the company’s 51st Foundation Day.

“We have not done well in the first seven months of this financial year so far. We should not live on our past laurels, we have to live for the present and the future,” he noted.

Against a production target of 875 MT, CIL is struggling to cross even the 800 MT mark this year. The company attributes the slump to heavy rainfall in key mining areas, including coalfields in the Southeastern region. Prasad, however, sounded confident it would be ramped up over the next few months, an optimism borne out by Coal India's history of increasing production in the second half of every financial year.