India to produce additional 20 million tonnes coking coal in 3-4 years: Goyal

To reduce imports, India will wash certain grades of coal to make available 20 million tonnes of coking coal in the next 3-4 years mainly for domestic steel industry's, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said.

"I am given to understand that there are certain grades of coal which, if washed, can be upgraded to coking coal. We are trying to get additional 20 million tonnes (of coking coal) within the next 3-4 years by processing this coal for domestic steel industry," Goyal, who is also Coal Minister, told reporters here.

Criticising the earlier governments for doing precious little, he said, "It was Congress' lethargy to increase production in India and they did not have the confidence in the ability of our own people.

They depended on foreign coal. Therefore, they permitted power plants to import coal. A good government should have said that you have 300 billion tonnes of coal. Why should there be a single plant dependent on imported coal."

Elaborating, he said, "There is a lot of coking grade coal but they are not fully suitable for power plants. Power cost also becomes expensive and we have to import coking coal. But if we wash this, it can be used as coking coal and I can give some other (grade) coal for the power plants which is cheaper."

On India's overseas coal assets aspirations, he said,"In coking coal, I will be happy if I get good mines (abroad) because India still needs coking coal. I am not looking for too many assets. India has so much coal that we don't need to look overseas."

He also informed that the Pudimadaka power plant in Andhra Pradesh will not be domestic coal-based. Earlier, government had approved the project based on imported coal.

On gold mining, he said,"Nothing had happened for 20 years in Kolar Gold Fields. Now, we have taken 2-3 actions. We have revitalised the company. I have asked them to sell the scrap lying there so that some money comes in to start exploration. We are starting to explore more areas to find out if there are more value of gold ores. I am confident that old reports will be proven wrong just like in case of Hindustan Zinc."

On financing of Bharat Gold Mines, he said, "You know I have never looked at govenrment support to revive anything. We do it in ourselves."