Coal India Misses May Output Target by 2%

New Delhi: State-owned Coal India Ltd has missed its output target for May by 1.9 per cent at 40.97 million tonne even as it gears up to meet the 1 billion tonne annual production mark, set by the government, in the next five years.

Its production target for the month was at 41.78 million tonnes (MT), the PSU said in a regulatory filing, without giving reasons for missing the target.

For the first two months of the current fiscal, however, CIL has produced 82.49 MT of coal, as against the target of 82.31 MT, it said.

It had registered 10.7 per cent growth to 41.52 MT in April, over the same month last year.

Coal India had missed its production target for the fiscal 2014-15 by 3 per cent, recording an output of 494.23 MT.

It had produced 462 MT coal in 2013-14, missing the target of 482 MT.

CIL, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the dry fuel's domestic production, has been drawing flak for missing production targets.

It had earlier said that ramping up output and improving profitability would be its top priorities. The company has admitted that the coal production target of 1 billion tonnes by 2019-20 is a huge challenge.