India's largest coal group Coal India Ltd (CIL) has introduced reversed spot e-auctions for coal importers and aimed at supplying 150 Mt of domestically-produced coal to replace coal imports. The "special spot e-auction scheme 2020 for import substitution" will add to the existing four categories of e-auctions and will focus on coal-fired power plants and on large coal importers such as manufacturers of steel, cement, sponge iron, and fertilisers, which imported around 150 Mt of coal in the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
In 2019-2020, CIL, which accounts for around 80% of India's domestic coal production, missed its production target of 660 Mt due to the flooding of a key coal mine; the company's production dipped from 606 Mt in 2018-2019 to 602 Mt (8.8% below the target). CIL plans to reach 1 Gt of coal production by the fiscal year 2024. In January 2020, the government promulgated the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 that aims at attracting investors in the coal mining sector by removing restrictions on end-use and prior experience in coal auctions. India currently imports around 235 Mt/year of coal, with around half of this amount tied to power plants or user plants and non-substitutable. The government aims at stopping most of substitutable coal imports and bets on the higher domestic production.