China aims to boost national coal reserves capacity to 600 mln T

China plans to boost its capacity to store national coal reserves to around 600 million tonnes, approximately 15% of annual coal consumption, the country’s state planner said on Friday.

The government’s deployable coal reserves capacity should be no less than 200 million tonnes, which could be directly dispatched by central and local government, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement.

The remaining 400 million tonnes would be inventory built at companies, it said.

At present, China has capacity for government-deployable coal reserves of 100 million tonnes, with about 40 million tonnes of coal in its reserve bases.

The NDRC said on Thursday it will release more than 10 million tonnes of coal from state reserves to ensure steady supply to the market ahead of peak summer demand.

China arranges 1 billion yuan ($155 million) of investment from the central government budget each year to support the construction of national reserve facilities, it said on Friday.

“In the next step, China will accelerate construction of more than 100 million tonnes reserve capacity, meanwhile increasing coal inventory at the reserve facilities,” said the statement.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Richard Pullin)