China’s state-owned coal firms target 12.65m tonnes of capacity cuts

BEIJING, Jan 15 (Reuters) – China’s central government-owned enterprises will target coal capacity cuts of 12.65 million tonnes in 2018, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

The Xinhua report, which followed a meeting of the heads of companies controlled by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), said elimination of coal-fired power generation capacity would also be actively encouraged.

It provided a separate 80 million tonne target for consolidation of coal capacity by central government-owned firms in China, the world’s largest coal producer, this year.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s state planner, said on Jan. 5 it planned to create several “super-large” coal mining companies by the end of 2020, each with capacity to produce 100 million tonnes per year of coal.

(Reporting by Tom Daly; editing by Mark Potter and David Evans)