More than $550 million would be invested to develop the company’s Lakhanpur-Belpahar-Lilari coal reserves to produce 30 million mt/y including an open-cast mine in the eastern Indian province of Odisah, $238 million on opening a new mine at the Rampur-Baura reserves in southeastern India, which would add production of 4 million t/y. Another $115 million would be invested in activating a new open-cast mine at the Yekona coal reserves in western India.
The official said that, considering the acute lack of transportation and logistics infrastructure, it was felt just increasing production would not suffice to meet demand from end users and, unless new investments were made in infrastructure, most of the incremental production would remain locked up at pitheads and not increase fuel sales of the miner. Hence, an investment to the tune of $638 million would be committed for infrastructure including construction of railway linkages between pitheads and rail network of the government-owned and operated Indian Railways.
