KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – With Coal India Limited (CIL) missing production target in the April to November period, the Coal Ministry has reiterated that the miner will have to “focus on productivity and production growth” as the recent increase in wage bill could not be allowed to impact on the profitability of the company.
Between April and November, CIL produced 329.30-million tons, which fell 5% short of the target set by the government.
The production target for 2017/18 has been set at 600-million tons, which will require CIL to produce an additional 270.70-million tons during the remaining four months of the current financial year and achieve an annualised growth rate of 8.3% over the corresponding previous year.
As Mining Weekly Online reported, CIL is considering a second price hike for all grades of coal to offset the impact of hikes in wages and salaries of workers and executives.
“Coal India will have to increase production and productivity. That goes without saying. I told them that they would have to do so when both management and workers’ leaders came to see me after signing of a new wage agreement,” Coal Secretary Susheel Kumar has said.
“While we stress increasing productivity and production, increasing prices is an issue for the CIL board to decide, as the government does not intervene in pricing,” he said.
Following a new wage agreement signed between CIL management and trade unions, CIL will face an increase in the wage bill to the tune of $892-million in a full year. Last week, sources said that CIL was considering a salary hike for all its executives and the cumulative impact of the increase could be around $125-million in a full year.
CIL employs 300 000 of whom 18 000 are in the executive cadre.