January 2, 2018 - Coal India (CIL) may miss out on meeting its production target of 600 million tonnes in 2017-18, going by the production pattern during the first nine months of the year. 

Provisional figures for the April-December 2017 period showed it has produced 383.93 million tonnes of the fossil fuel, falling short of the 406.58 MT target by six percent. 

However, during the nine-month period, it clocked a 1.6 percent growth in production from 377.77 MT produced in the same period last year. 

A CIL official said the company is striving to make up the shortfall by producing in excess of 2 MT per day. 

According to the data, the miner produced 54.63 MT of coal in December, missing the production target of 58.89 MT for the month by seven percent. 

With better availability of rail rakes and upstick in demand, the miner achieved a 7.6 percent growth in off-take to 421.41 MT during the first nine months of the current fiscal, as compared to 391.78 MT during the same period last year. 

Brokerage firm IIFL said in a report that there is a strong possibility that CIL would miss its annual production target. 

CIL was given a production target of 600 million tonnes for FY18, an annual growth of 8.3 percent over FY17.