India is considering sourcing coking coal from Mongolia for domestic steel companies, a government official said on January 19, media reported.
During an online meeting between India's steel minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Mongolia's chief cabinet secretary L Oyun Erdene, the latter proposed the opportunity of Mongolian companies to supply cooking coal to India, according to the official.
In response, the Indian minister expressed interest in such supplies, saying talks about the issue between the two governments will be taken forward.
Previously, the Indian government had conducted several rounds of talks with the Russia government in terms of importing coking coal from Russia. India mainly imported the steelmaking material from Australia.
India's Tata Steel last year took a trial import of coking coal from Russia, in a bid to reduce the dependency on Australia coking coal.
"Russia is a good option for us. Australia also often has cyclone and other weather issues, so we imported and tried out some Russian material," said Tata's managing director Narendran.
In FY2018-19, coking coal demand totaled 58.37 million tonnes for India's steel industry, in which 51.83 million depended on imports.
(Writing by Alex Guo Editing by Harry Huo)
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