Vedanta and Hindalco win first mine auction in India

In mid-June 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi India announced that his administration was ending a four-decade state monopoly on the mining and selling of coal by auctioning 41 mines across the country to private companies.

The offering has two objectives: solving a fuel shortage that threatens to choke the nation’s industrial activity and boosting India’s economy to help the country recover from the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

Billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta offered to share 21% of its revenue from the Radhikapur West mine in eastern Odisha state, while billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Hindalco bid 14.25% revenue share, the highest, for the Chakla mine in neighboring Jharkhand province, the coal ministry said in a statement.

The auctions are conducted in two stages, the first of which is the submission of a technical bid, evaluated by the coal ministry. The bidders who qualify then submit financial bids in which they detail what percentage of revenue would be paid to the government.

No technical bids were received for 15 of the 38 mines, Reuters reported.

On the first day of the auctions, final offers for 5 mines with an annual production capacity of 13.75 million tonnes ranged from 10.5% to 30.75%, the coal ministry said.

The Ministry of Coal estimates the mines would generate 330 billion rupees ($4.3 billion) of capital investment over the next five to seven years, boosting the nation’s output by as much as 225 million tonnes a year.

The authority also expects the operations to provide thousands of jobs — about 70,000 direct positions — and earn states extra annual revenue of 200 billion rupees ($2.6 billion).