NEW DELHI: Indian coal production in May fell 3.25 percent from a year earlier, the first drop in two months, on lower-than-targeted output from miner Coal India Ltd .
The energy-hungry nation mined 43.23 million tonnes of coal in May, a touch lower than 43.5 million tonnes dug out in the prior month, provisional figures obtained from a government source showed on Wednesday.
Asia's third-largest economy struggles with frequent power cuts due to insufficient supplies of coal and gas, which hinders economic growth and forces the nation to seek costly imports.
India, which relies on coal to fuel more than half of its power generation, leans on state-run miner Coal India for about 80 percent of its output.
The overall target set for May by the government was 46 million tonnes, of which Coal India was to produce 36.5 million tonnes, the document showed.
But the miner's May output reached only 34.6 million tonnes, trailing the target by almost 2 million tonnes.
Coal India said on Tuesday that it had also missed its June output target of 35.2 million tonnes, with production last month at 32.6 million tonnes.
Reduced working hours imposed by the Odisha state government due to a heat wave during the month hit the miner's output, a Coal India spokesman said.
The eastern Indian state along with the states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh account for the bulk of India's coal production.
"Also, unseasonal rains in some of the coal-producing areas in May affected our production," the spokesman said.
The four-month monsoon season normally begins in June and local coal production typically drops during the period.
India's thermal coal production fell 3.9 percent from a year earlier to 39 million tonnes, provisional figures obtained by Reuters showed.
Coking coal output rose 3.4 percent to 4.2 million tonnes during the month, the figures showed.
In 2012/13, India produced 557.7 million tonnes of coal, 3.3 percent higher from a year earlier.
Following is a table on India's coal production for May versus the year-ago period and the cumulative output for the 2013-14 fiscal year that began on April 1.
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