Piyush Goyal: Coal block e-auction to rake in $100 billion
The minister, who held a series of meetings with existing and potential investors during his three-day visit, said the auction process has already begun and people have started registering themselves on the website.
Union Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said investors have no concerns about the Centre taking the ordinance route for e-auction of coal blocks and the process would generate over $100 billion in royalties.
"The ordinance has the weight of a law. Any action taken under an ordinance has complete protection as it is done within the legal framework of an Act. Therefore, there are no concerns at all," Goyal said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meet in Davos.
The minister, who held a series of meetings with existing and potential investors during his three-day visit, said the auction process has already begun and people have started registering themselves on the website. "The bidding will start next month and all mines awarded in the bids will be legally tenable and can never go wrong. I do not think there is any cause for concern to any investor," he added.
Goyal was of the opinion that the entire revenue generated through the process would go to the people of India in the form of lower power tariff. "I believe majorly the eastern states, particularly West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and to a lesser extent Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar stand to gain at least $100 billion over the next 30 years," the minister said.
Apart from that, you will see that power tariffs will come down significantly and the benefits that will be passed on to the consumers over the next 30 years would be enormous, he said.
On the state of the coal sector in India Goyal said "Coal production in India is stagnating at about 1-1.5 per cent CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) over the past 4-5 years. We came to power on May 26, 2014 and the coal production shot up to 8.4 per cent from June to December. Also, electricity generation in the first six months of coming to power went up by 11 per cent," Goyal said.