Launching the auction of coal mines for commercial mining, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the coal sector has finally been pulled out of decades in lockdown and liberated.
Noting that India having the fourth largest coal reserves in the world was importing coal so far, he said that the move will make India self-reliant in terms of coal and also create lakhs of job opportunities.
Modi said the opening up of commercial coal mining will help people of Eastern and Central India in terms of jobs and prosperity.
The decision to open up commercial coal mining for private players was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package last month.
“Today, we are not just launching the auction of commercial coal mining but are also pulling the coal sector out of years in lockdown,” Modi said during the video address during the launch program.
He also said that the Centre aims to gasify 100 million tonne coal by 2030 and with an investment of Rs 200 billion.
The Prime Minister noted that without a strong mining and mineral sector self-reliance of a country is not possible. He added that the opening up of commercial mining will create new resources and new markets for companies, more revenues for the states will get more revenue and more employment opportunities for people living near the coal mines.
Talking of the environmental concerns he said that it has been taken care of that India’s commitment towards the environment is not compromised while reforming the coal sector and the objective of gasification of coal is in that direction. the rate in Australia reached 7.1 percent in May and stood at the worst level in more than 15 years, which is heading for its first recession in almost three decades due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to official data published on Thursday.
“The fall in employment (in May) close to a quarter of a million adds to the 600,000 (new unemployed) in April, which totals a fall of 835,000 people (who have lost their jobs) since March,” Bjorn Jarvis, the senior representative of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, said.
Unemployment figures have increased markedly since March, when Australia closed its borders and ordered the closure of nonessential businesses to curb the spread of the virus, which has infected 7,370 people in the country, with 102 deaths, reports Efe news
“In two months, the percentage of people aged 15 and over employed in Australia decreased from around 62.5 percent to around 58.7 percent,” Jarvis said, adding that women had been more affected by the crisis than men and that younger people had found it harder to keep their jobs.
He said that about “2.3 million people, around 1 in 5 employed people, were affected by either job loss between April and May or had fewer hours than usual for economic reasons in May”.
Responding to the figures, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that “these are dark times” and stressed that his government “will not rest and will work on the biggest economic challenges the country has seen”.
The government has committed aid funds of up to A$259 billion ($178 billion), equivalent to 13.3 percent of its GDP.
By 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of Australia estimates that GDP will drop by 6 percent and the unemployment rate may reach 10 percent in the country, which had registered almost 30 consecutive years of economic growth.
