India to import 100 million tonne of coal by 2012 .

Bloomberg reported that Coal and Oil Group quoted India will import as much as 100 million metric tonne of thermal coal by 2012 as new power plants are built, the country’s largest importer of the fuel for energy generation.

Mr Kaamil Fareed senior trading manager at Coal and Oil at a McCloskey coal conference in Cape Town said that imports will jump because of all the power plants being launched.”

Mr Fareed said that India’s imports of thermal coal were more than 28 million tonne last year and are expected to rise to 32 million tonne in 2009 and 38 million tonne in 2010.