CIL allows direct participation of foreign coal buyers in e-auction

Coal India Limited (CIL) on Friday announced that coal consumers in the neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, who wish to import coal from India, can directly participate in the Single Window Mode Agnostic (SWMA) auctions conducted by the company.

Earlier, access to CIL’s coal by coal consumers across the borders was only through domestic coal traders who were allowed to buy and sell coal without any end use restrictions.

“Opening SWMA e-auctions to foreign buyers reflects CIL’s calibrated approach to market expansion while fully safeguarding domestic coal requirements. This step enhances transparency, competition and global market integration” said a senior company official.

The revised framework will be effective from 1 January as CIL’s board cleared the decks recently, tweaking the scheme’s mechanism in the SWMA auction, the company said in an exchange filing.

Key provisions for foreign buyers include one-time registration, participation through digital bidding, advance electronic payments and export through notified logistics channels.

Payment process would be transparent as per Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) rules. While buyers from Nepal can make the payments in INR as well as US Dollar, buyers from the other two countries are required to make their payment in US Dollars, valuation of which would be in INR.

This comes after CIL had earlier conducted dialogues with the prospective coal consumers from abroad to categorise the enabling clauses and gauge their need for coal.

CIL supplies 80 per cent of total coal production in India.