Factors Influencing on Coal Price and Development of a Pricing Model for Indian Coal

Abstract

Coal plays a crucial role in India as it fulfills almost 67% of the total commercial energy consumed in Indian industries. Fossil fuels are the major drivers of the country's economy. The coal price is affected by many parameters including its grade, demand at the national level and international coal price. We observed in the year 2017-18, the total production of coal in India was 675 MT but the actual demand for coal in India was 884 Million Tonnes (MT), with the actual supply falling short resulting in a demand deficit. This deficit was offset by import 202 MT of coal. Over 22.8% of coal imports in 2017-18 were sourced from Indonesia followed by import from Australia and South Africa. The study identifies some major factors that may have an influenced on Indian coal price, including coal export, coal import and international coal prices by analysing and processing of Indian coal data which is from 1993to2018 with the help of SPSS software by the regression analysis. The logarithmic coal price is the dependent variable and the hypothesized independent variables are relative value of demand and supply, export, import, stock, international coal price, international oil prices. According to the result, the factors like a relative value of demand and supply, coal production, international oil price are no significant influencing on Indian coal prices and the significant variables are helpful to developing coal pricing mode for Indian coal. The coal pricing model has useful to estimate the future price of Indian coal and also to identify the impact of import coal quantity on Indian coal prices.