By IANS,
New Delhi : The power and coal ministries will meet soon to resolve the issues between NTPC and Coal India (CIL) such as quality of coal and outstanding payments, Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Thursday.
“There are issues with regard to quality of coal … With regard to outstanding dues both on our side and on the side of coal ministry. It is important to resolve that and I intend to do that post looking at the note which they (coal ministry) have sent,” Scindia told reporters here after meeting Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal.
“With regard to CIL and NTPC, the ministry of coal has responded to a note with details. We will now study that note and their responses and I propose to have an internal meeting between the officials of coal ministry and officials of power Ministry to see if we can resolve the pending issues expeditiously,” Scindia said.
Both ministers met Thursday to discuss issues like coal supply, power purchase agreement and coal linkages for power projects.
“We have discussed a number of issues today. We discussed issues such as doing away with the necessity of a PPA (power purchase agreement) for signing FSA (fuel supply agreement),the issue of restoration of coal linkage for North Karanpura,” Scindia said.
“We are hopeful that we would soon be in a position to resolve them (coal and power issues),” said Jaiswal.
“I am hopeful that within a month or so, the issues would be resolved,” he said.
NTPC had refused to sign the fuel supply pacts with CIL saying the quality of coal supplied by the coal PSU was poor and that it was not ready to accept inferior quality coal.
CIL had earlier this month stopped supplies to some NTPC plants alleging the power producer was not making regular payments.