The need for improving the quality and quantity of indigenous coal for major users such as the power, cement and steel sectors has found sharp focus at the two-day coaltrans India conference, which held at Mumbai. The tone was set by Mr C. P. Jam, NTPC Chairman, who said that out of the 331 million tonnes of coal produced into he country, nearly 265 million tonnes was consumed by the power sector While coal contributed to 62 per cent of India's power generation, hydro generation accounted for 24 per cent. Listing out the concerns of the power sector over coal availability, he said with the domestic coal producers going for more open-cast mining, instead of underground mining, the quality of indigenous coal had come down. "We used of get coal with a calorific value of 5,900 kilo calories/kg in the early sixties, but today it has come down to 3,400 kilo calories/kg. This was impacting the power sector in the form of increased cost of power production," he pointed out.
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