Mr S Narsing Rao gave up his IAS career to pick up the reins of Coal India Ltd the world’s single largest coal mining company. As the immediate past chair and managing director of the Andhra Pradesh based joint venture coal mining company Singareni Collieries Company Ltd, he succeeded in jacking up the production from 36 million tonnes in 2006-07 to 53 million tonnes in 2011-12.
Q - What would you say are the biggest challenges before Coal India Ltd now?
A - In the given circumstances, it is production, production and production. The single-most important issue before me is to produce and supply. While as the CEO of the company, the effort always remains to address factors such as cost of production, which is anyway low for me due to CIL’s relatively easy mining conditions, but for me the main challenge is to supply. Rest are all housekeeping issues. From next year, I am planning to do away with the present system of production targets. There should be only one target, and that is the offtake target.
This is something that CIL is considering and very likely that this will be introduced.
Q - Why?
A - I feel that the focus should shift from production to offtake. This will address three-four areas. I feel that there is need to change this present overwhelming obsession with production only.
In many cases, coal is just produced and dumped raising issues of loss of quality of the coal, fire safety, theft, vigilance issues and what not ... all this can be put to rest. What you have despatched from your area should be your achievement, not just production. Therefore, instead of two numbers, there would be only one number. Merely producing will not do. Offtake is important. At the end of the day, this is what matters to the consumer. Despatch is what gets monetised.
Q - What is your XII Plan investment?
A - The proposed figure is INR 25,400 crore. However, my take is a little different on these matters. For me, there are only five numbers ... these are the respective figures of production for the five years. Capital investment by itself is not such a major thing, especially when 50% of CIL’s production is outsourced.
To read the full transcription please visit www.steelguru.com
(www.steelguru.com)
