The government has proposed to offer seven open cast mines of about 25 million tonne capacity to Mine Developer-cum-Operators (MDOs) by this year end to increase coal production.

Besides this, 14 blocks for power and three for mining have been put on offer recently under Government Dispensation Route and allocation of these blocks will be completed shortly.

This was stated by Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal while addressing the inaugural session of the ‘National Coal Conference’ organized by the ASSOCHAM recently.

He said that some more blocks will be offered to private sector shortly to ensure increased availability of coal in the country.

During the year 2012-13, the overall production of coal has increased 17.5 million tonne. Of this increase, close to 16.4 million tonne came from Coal India (CIL). CIL has also registered a growth of 1.3 percent in production, 1.8 percent in off-take and 7.4 percent in coal supply to the power sector during April-May 2013.

This increase has been due to the concerted efforts by the coal PSUs, close monitoring and better inter-ministerial co-ordination by officials of Ministry of Coal.