New Delhi - India, endowed with the fifth-largest coal reserves in the world, stands as the second-largest consumer of coal, driven by a rapidly growing economy. However, the current consumption landscape reveals a critical need for imports, particularly for coking coal and high-grade thermal coal, which are not sufficiently available within domestic reserves. This shortfall necessitates imports to support key industries, including steel.

Coal imports during April-July period of FY 2024-25 experienced a marginal increase of 0.9%, reaching 90.51 million tonnes (MT) compared to 89.68 MT in . . .