Coal Minister assures RINL to extend help to secure mine

NEW DELHI: Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal today assured state-run steel maker Rashtriya Ispat Nigam of all "needful help" in coal block allotment.

RINL Chairman and Managing Director A P Choudhary along with his senior colleagues met Jaiswal and appraised him of the initiatives taken by the company to increase capacity from 3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 6.3 mtpa.

The company has plans to take the capacity to 20 mtpa in future.

"The Coal Minister assured RINL of all possible needful help in the allotment of coal blocks to the company as RINL has no captive blocks," a statement from RINL said.

"Choudhary impressed upon the Coal Minister the need to allot both coking coal and thermal coal mines to RINL as the company is going for massive expansion," it said.

RINL does not have any iron ore mine. In the first half of the current fiscal, RINL posted a 28 per cent rise in turnover to Rs 6,216 crore compared to the same quarter last fiscal. Net profit rose by 5.1 per cent to Rs 221 crore during the period.

"The profitability of the company would have been much higher had RINL been endowed at least with captive iron ore mines," the company had said recently.