Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday he was confident India’s imports of coking coal from Russia would increase significantly in coming months, adding that steelmakers had started testing samples of Russian coal. India long depended on Australia to meet most of its coking coal requirements but has progressively cut down on imports from the country in the last three years. “Offtake of coal from Far East Russia can grow as the coking coal…becomes more attractive from the point of view of price, ease of availability, connectivity to the ports and sea transport,” the Ministry of Steel quoted Pradhan as saying in a statement.
