Coal India to join Rs 1 lakh-cr league

KOLKATA: The state-controlled Coal India Ltd ( CIL) is poised to join the league of companies with Rs 100,000-crore turnover this fiscal, its chairman Narsing Rao told ET.


“We achieved a turnover of Rs 88,281 crore during 2012-13 and hope to achieve a 12-13% growth. I am confident we will easily cross the Rs 100,000-crore turnover during 2013-14,” Rao said. There are only eight companies in India that are in the Rs 100,000-crore club: Indian Oil Corporation, Reliance Industries, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, ONGC and Tata Steel.

However, when it comes to net profit, CIL is the fourth largest after ONGC, RIL and SBI, with the Kolkata-based company registering a net profit of Rs 17,356 crore during 2012-13. “We will produce around 482 million tonnes of coal this year and sell around 492 million tonnes. With prices rising by about 4.7% during last month, we hope to surpass the Rs 100,000-crore mark,” a senior CIL official said.

Coal India is, in fact, one of the largest PSUs that repays heavily to the states from where it operates. This is for the second successive year that the company has paid more than Rs 30,000 crore to the exchequer.

During 2012-13, the coal major’s payment to the exchequer — both Central and eight coal-producing states — was around Rs35,800 crore in the form of royalty and cess on coal, a slew of other taxes and duties, corporate tax, and dividend and dividend tax as against around Rs 30,000 crore it contributed in 2011-12. Among the Central PSUs, Coal India is one of the highest contributors to the government exchequer and possibly among the top three.

Of the total cash outflow to the government exchequer in the fiscal ending 2013, CIL paid around Rs 23,800 crore directly to the Central government. Apart from direct contribution, CIL also plays a role in freight revenue earning of the Indian Railways. During 2012-13, there has been an increase of 21 million tonnes in coal despatches through railways.

Coal dispatches rose to 251 million tonnes in 2012-13 from 230 million tonnes in fiscal ending 2012, registering a growth of over 9%. Around 30% of freight revenue of the Indian Railways comes from CIL.