Coal crisis: No shortage of anything, report baseless: FM Sitharaman

Sitharaman said Power Minister RK Singh had recorded just two days back when he said that absolutely baseless information is floating around that maybe there is a shortage of coal, lack of other inventories which has led to sudden spurt in demand for supply in energy. difference will arise. consumption.

“Absolutely baseless! There is no shortage of anything. In fact, if I recall the minister’s statement, every power generation establishment has the stock for the next four days absolutely available in its premises and the supply chain is not broken at all. It is,” Sitharaman said at the Harvard Kennedy School here on Tuesday.

During an interaction organized by the Mosawar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Sitharaman was asked by Harvard professor Lawrence Summers about reports of energy shortages and coal shortages in India.

“There is not going to be any shortage which could lead to any shortfall in supply. So it takes care of the power situation of India. Now we are a power surplus country.

“We are taking a fair amount of risk to see what is available to India in the energy basket, how much is based on fossil fuels and how much comes from renewables and we are always looking at ways to favor it. of renewable energy. So the picture is not of short supply, but also of new components in the basket,” he said.

On the immunization drive in India against COVID-19 and how the Indian government has come close to delivering one billion doses, Sitharaman said that over the decades, India has consistently built up this institutional arrangement, where primary health centers exist, up to the village level. And they take care of the basic needs of basic primary care given to patients in those areas.

“These centers have, over the years, carried out vaccinations for newborns that have to be given periodically… India has been very successful in containing the spread of polio,” he said. Furthermore, he said that over the years, periodic malaria or seasonal diseases for which doctors care for patients in a particular area have given India the ability to handle and treat large epidemic-ratio diseases.

“As soon as vaccines became available, our systems were ready to be fanned out, even going to some remote areas to give doses to people. Therefore, the institutional system in India has always been the framework, which has been built over the years.”

She said the question with regard to vaccines was whether they were to be preserved in a certain temperature and distributed across India.

“Fortunately the two vaccinations we have used are quite suited for Indian conditions and hence the logistics required to transport it from one place to another did not pose much of a challenge and hence we have been successful,” she said. .

Vaccine Covishield is a version of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India. Covaxin is an indigenously developed vaccine by the pharma company Bharat Biotech.

He said that India is providing vaccines free of cost through bilateral arrangements with some countries.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.