Kolkata : Coal India (CIL) is focusing on reducing its production cost by improving productivity and efficiency and remains optimistic to be competitive even as the Central government is allowing commercial coal mining for the private sector, its chief said on Friday.
CIL is planning to riase its capital expenditure to Rs 9,500 crore in 2018-19 to boost its production capacity, CMD Gopal Singh said.
“Allowing commercial mining is an opportunity for us. We have been the market leader and will remain so. We have been focusing on reducing cost and improving productivity and efficiency,” he said. “Our target is to produce coal at a lesser cost than that of the commercial miners,” he said. CIL achieved 10.9 per cent growth in its profit before tax during October-December period of current fiscal as because it managed to reduce cost of production by Rs 52 per tonne.
