New Delhi. The Finance Minister, Shri Pranab Mukherjee in his Budget speech in Parliament today, proposed to introduce a competitive bidding process for allocating coal blocks for captive mining. This, he said, would ensure greater transparency and increased participation in production from these blocks.

The Minister said that coal is the mainstay of India’s energy sector and 75% of the power generation in the country is currently coal based.

The Minister also announced that the Government proposes to take steps to set up a “Coal Regulatory Authority” to create a level plain field in the coal sector. This, he said, would facilitate resolution of issues like economic pricing of coal and benchmarking of standards of performance.

Keeping in view the importance of energy sector for infrastructure support to the Indian economy, the Plan Outlay for the Ministry of Coal has been fixed at Rs. 13,518.39 crore. This will be met by budgetary support of Rs.400 crore and IEBR of Rs.13,118.39 crore.