Journalism of Courage
Just when the government was betting on an industrial recovery based on robust core sector growth in September,a fall in Coal Indias output over the last few months has raised questions about the reliability of the data sets. The uncertainty means the industrial output figures for September 2013,due later this month,could also be suspect.
CIL,which accounts for over 85 per cent of domestic coal production,had on Monday informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that its output fell by five million tonne in October to 35.03 MT as against the target of 40.832 MT last.
In September too,its output was marginally lower at 33.16 million tonne against a target of 33.58 million tonne though according to core sector data,coal posted a 12.5 per cent growth in production,which helped the infra benchmark data to post a smart 8 per cent rise for the month.
A government source said the higher core sector data for coal is based on higher dispatch of pithead stocks which increased 103 per cent as per the provisional figures. So CIL reported a marginally higher off-take in September of 35.79 MT as against a target of 34.84 MT for coal.
But this too is suspect. Coal transport by principal transporter the Railways has showed a minor growth of less than 0.5 MT in September at 39.75 MT,sequentially.
A possible explanation was provided by Kameswara Rao,leader,energy utilities and mining at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. A lot of havoc in production and output has been created by the cyclone and heavy rains in the eastern part of the country where most of the mines are located. So the data can not be taken as a perfect reflection of the fact on the ground, he said.
Against the wobbly September data those for October at the worlds largest coal miner are dismal too.
We will have to wait and see hat the data shows in October before we can say there has been a turnaround in coal production. Just a months data does not prove anything it could be an outlier, said Sunil Sinha,director (public finance) at India Ratings.
Pointing out that a low base in September 2012 or a delay in submission of data by companies could have boosted the September coal production figures,Sinha said,The mining sector is not doing too well. So if data gets bunched up for one month and if the base is small,even a minor increment in output becomes magnified. The eight core industries have 38 per cent weightage in the Index of Industrial Production.
Industrial output data for September is likely to be released on November 12.
