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Covid curbs may further push back auctions for commercial coal mines
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SME Times News Bureau | 11 Aug, 2020
The government may push back the bidding for commercial coal mines as
the Covid-19 pandemic continues to restrict free movement while the
investors want more time to place their technical bids based on site
visits and evaluation.
Official sources said that though no
formal request has come so far from the investors seeking further
extension of the bidding dates, it is likely that this may become an
issue in the regular query the auction process has generated from the
interested parties.
Ever since initiating the e-auction process
for commercial coal mines on June 18, the government has already
extended the dates for submission of technical bids once. Now the last
date for submitting a technical bid is by 2 p.m. on September 29 while
the e-auction would be carried out for the qualified bidders between
October 19 and November 9.
But a few investors have raised the
query as to how technical bids could be placed at such a short notice
when investors would need at least 45-60 days to evaluate a mine before
placing their bids.
"But this leaves us with very short time.
The travel restrictions and lockdown in various parts of the country is
not helping either. So at least the bidding should be postponed till the
end of the year," said an investor keenly evaluating the coal mines
that the government is offering for the first time to the private sector
for commercial extraction.
The government announced bids for
commercial coal mining rights on June 18 when Prime Minister Narendra
Modi launched the auction process for 41 coal mines. Before this, the
coal sector has been a regulated one where state-owned Coal India Ltd
almost enjoyed monopoly position with private sector getting coal blocks
only for captive operations.
In all the 41 mines with a total
geological coal reserve of 17 billion tonnes is on offer under the first
phase of commercial coal mine auctions. These include both large and
small mines with peak rated capacities (PRC) ranging from 0.5 to 40
million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of coal.
The cumulative PRC of
all the mines is 225 mtpa. Of these, the Centre is withdrawing one mine
of Bander in Maharashtra as it falls under eco-sensitive zone and is
also considering the Chhattisgarh government's request to replace four
coal blocks marked for auction for commercial mining.
The mines
on offer are largely fully explored, meaning that it could be brought to
production immediately. Moreover, four upcoming coal mines are in offer
that could provide input to the steel sector.
The mines are
located in five states since the auctions started in Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. The commercial coal
mining auctions are completely different from earlier regimes of
restricted sectors, use and price. Now there are no such restrictions at
all.
The coal block auctions have so far received good response
from the investors with a lot of inquiries coming from both Indian and
global mining, metal and energy companies.
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