NEW DELHI: Coal India Limited (CIL) on Wednesday announced that it was now ready for ventures abroad and was looking at acquiring coal mines in Indonesia, Canada and Australia in the coming months. For this, CIL had revived its foreign arm, Coal Videsh, that would look for buying coal assets abroad.

Addressing a press conference here, CIL Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Partha S. Bhattacharyaa, said some good coal mines abroad had come to the company's notice and the core team constituted for this purpose was already on the job. The main thrust would be on acquiring mines with coking coal as there was a great demand for this product. Mr. Bhattacharyya said that because of the excellent performance of CIL and its four profit making subsidiaries, the Government had granted the `Mini Ratna' status and the companies had fulfilled the conditions laid down by the Department of Public Enterprise.

The newly acquired status would provide more financial and operational autonomy to the company and it would now have to move and appoint independent directors.

He said CIL, as a whole, made a profit of Rs. 8,212.69 crore (provisional) during 2006-07 against the target of Rs. 7,013.91 crore.

The profit was lower by Rs. 464 crore than what the company made last year primarily because of non-revision of coal prices as a result of which inflationary impact on costs remained uncovered and because of imposition of stay by the Supreme Court on e-marketing of coal.

CIL had paid the highest ever dividend of Rs. 1,500 crore to the Union Government during 2006-07 which constitutes 23.75 per cent of the paid up equity of CIL of Rs. 6,316 crore.

Mr. Bhattacharyya said while Northern Coalfields Limited, Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, South Easter Coalfields Limited and Western Coalfields Limited surpassed their respective targets, Bharat Coking Coal Limited, Central Coalfields Limited and Eastern Coalfields Limited fell short of their targets by one million tonnes, 65 lakh tonnes and 2.54 million tonnes, respectively.

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