By March 2014, Coal India (CIL) plans to install GPS based system for tracking transportation of coal and thereby improve efficiency at its major mines. The system is intended to prevent theft of coal and increase productivity.

The state-run miner is learnt to have issued tenders for installing the tracking system across all major mines under after the coal ministry encouraged it for the same.

Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal had earlier said that coal companies have been slow in implementing mechanisation in the mines.

CIL had suggested that GPS system is one of the tools to achieve this goal. A couple of years ago, an internal study by CIL showed that losses could run over Rs 50,000 if a 170--tonne truck at any of CIL mines remained idle for half-an-hour.

This figure would be double if the truck was of 240 tonnes capacity. CIL missed its production target and produced 452.5 million tonne (mn t) in 2012-13. Its output target was 464 mn t in 2012-13.

For fiscal 2013-14, the coal ministry aims production of 482 mn t and off-take of 492 mn t for CIL.