Biznext India : The lockdown has taken a heavy toll on mining activities of PSU miners like NMDC and Coal India. While NMDC has reported 37% drop in Iron Ore output in April, Coal India’s coal output slipped by 11%.
NMDC, India’s largest Iron Ore producer has reported 37% drop in monthly Iron Ore production in April at 1.80 million tonnes (MT). The company had produced 2.90 MT Iron Ore in April 2019. Out of 1.80 MT, Iron Ore output at NMDC’s Chattishgarh mines was 1.31 MT, while the output at Karnataka mines was 0.49 MT. NMDC’s Iron Ore sales by almost 50% to 1.38 MT in April 2020 as compared to 2.70 MT in April 2019.
Meanwhile, Coal India, the largest coal miner in the world has reported 10.9% drop in its April Coal output to 40.30 MT from 45.30 MT in April 2019. It offtake also dropped by 25.5% to 39.06 MT from 52.41 MT in April 2019.
Both the central government and state governments have placed mining in the list of essential services. Despite this, mineral production and offtake have been severely impacted owing to weak demand and logistics issues.