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Singareni Collieries paid-up capital rises

V. Rishi Kumar

HYDERABAD, Feb. 21

THE paid-up capital of the State-owned Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) has gone up from Rs 1,535 crore to Rs 1,607 crore, with the Andhra Pradesh Government and the Central Government infusing an additional equity of Rs 37 crore and Rs 35.55 cror e respectively.

The authorised share capital of SCCL has also been increased to Rs 1,800 crore from Rs 1,600 crore.

Due to better performance during 1999-2000 and in the current fiscal, SCCL managed to reduce its accumulated losses from Rs 1,005 crore to Rs 648 crore by March 2000.

However, as against the production target of 31 million tonnes (mt), it managed to achieve a production of 29.56 mt -- about 8.16 per cent above the previous year's production of 27.33 mt. A 13-day strike resulted in a production loss of 1.10 mt and non- materialisation of new projects.

In the last fiscal, SCCL earned a pre-tax profit of Rs. 302.35 crore after setting off loss of Rs 6.23 crore on Coal Chemicals Complex as against the net profit of Rs 121.80 crore in the previous year.

The exploration wing of SCCL carried out detailed exploration and managed to establish additional coal reserves of 157.83 mt under `proved category.' Based on this, the total proved reserves in the Godavari Valley coalfield have gone up to 7,504 mt and t he coal extracted by SCCL was about 557 mt till the end of 1999-2000.

Coal museum: A coal museum is being established at Kothagudem with a view to preserving the heritage of Singareni.

All items of antique/archival value, which include ancient mining equipment and accessories, coal samples of different grades and rock samples of different formations and important deeds of the company are planned to be preserved at the museum.