CIL holds pre-bid meeting with prospective bidders for coal imports

State-owned coal mining and refining company, Coal India Limited (CIL) today announced that it held three pre-bid meetings on June 14, 2022, and June 17, 2022, with prospective coal importing agencies evincing interest in pitching in, in the three international competitive bidding e-tenders that the company had floated earlier in the month for import of coal. The overseas sourcing of coal by CIL was directed by the government.

The meetings were scheduled to help the bidders keen on competing in the process, gain a better understanding of the bid document, scope of work and its finer shades and importantly iron out the crimps.

A total of eleven coal importers joined the session with CIL officials. The prominent Indian agencies among them were Adani Enterprises Limited, Mohit Minerals and Chettinad Logistics Private Limited. A couple of coal exporting agencies from abroad also have shown interest including one from Indonesia.

Important amendments in the tender that the bidders requested were, narrowing the time window of the bid price validity from 90 days to 60 days.

Another was fixing the time period for the supply of the first tranche of shipment, from the date of the letter of award, between 4 and 6 weeks. Earlier, the supply schedule was based on a particular percentage of delivery in each of the months of the second quarter of FY'23.

Taking cognizance of their requests favourably, CIL amended the bid document and a corrigendum has already been floated on the e-procurement portal to hasten the process without any bumps.

For the coal that lands on the Indian shores coal quantity assessment and quality testing shall have to be done through CIL's empanelled third-party sampling agencies' CIL had previously floated a short-term indent based international competitive bid for 2.416 million tonnes (MTs) of coal to source coal from overseas on behalf of State gencos and Independent Power Plants (IPPs) for blending with the domestic coal.

Close on the heels of this, two more medium-term tenders for sourcing 3 MT each at the western and eastern ports of the country were floated to keep coal on tap for immediate availability and future use.

The last date or receipt of bids for short-term tender is June 29, 2022, while that of the medium-term is July 5, 2022.